Start capturing
Tap Start on the Capture tab. The first time, iOS asks you to approve a VPN configuration — that's expected, and it's how Hollowport reads every app's traffic without a separate Mac or a manually configured Wi-Fi proxy. Approve it once and Hollowport starts as an on-device Network Extension; you won't be asked again on future sessions.
The Capture tab's title shows a small Live indicator while a session is running.
Generate some traffic
Switch to whatever app you actually want to inspect and use it normally — browse a screen, log in, pull to refresh. Every connection it makes appears back in Hollowport's Capture tab in real time, one row per request, without you needing to do anything else.
Read a request
Each row shows the method, host and path, status code, and duration at a glance. Tap any row to open the full detail: request and response headers, and a pretty-printed, collapsible body for JSON — with automatic decoding for GraphQL and gRPC/protobuf traffic even when there's no schema to work from.
If a request looks opaque
An unreadable HTTPS request almost always means the certificate isn't fully trusted yet — see Certificate Setup.
Stop when you're done
Tap Stop on the Capture tab to end the session. Running the Network Extension does use some extra battery and CPU while active, the same as any VPN-based tool — there's no reason to leave it running when you're not actively debugging.
Where to go next
Once requests are showing up, Traffic View covers reading the list itself in more depth, and Problems covers what to check first when something actually failed.