Requestly is a web extension (chrome/firefox) that I stumbled upon while working on an internal tool at my job. It provides relatively easy to use interface for redirecting requests, modifying headers or query params, blocking requests, etc. In my day to day, Requestly helps a lot with redirecting production, minified code to local, unminified code with source mapping for easier troubleshooting and debugging. And over the course of a few months, I’ve learned a few tricks to make this tool even more useful.
We are “hackers” after all ;)
- Group multiple redirect rules if they are related
This helps save time and $$$ (Requestly has a limitation of 10 free “rules”) so you can turn related debugging context on/off more easily.

In the screenshot example, I’m grouping the production JS redirection with a production API redirection (because likely your production JS would request a different backend URL than your local one).
2. Use redirection to block requests
This also helps save time and $$$, there have been cases for me where I need to redirect some URLs and block others. In the screenshot above, you’ll notice the last rule redirects an unwanted URL to a broken URL, which effectively “blocks” it. This setup (if applicable) helps to save you a separate “Block” rule, so you can get more out of the 10 free rules.
3. Use redirection to manipulate script loading order
Sometimes loading order of JS files matter in a web project, and if an issue arises and you suspect that the wrong ordering could be the culprit, you can use a redirection trick to switch the ordering of scripts, this is especially helpful if you are debugging a production issue where the HTML code is not easily changeable.

One thing to pay attention here is the additional query parameter we added to the second request, it is necessary because without which the redirection would go into an infinite loop. Also for this to work, both rules need to use “Equals” instead of other options.
This is also a nice hack for commenting on your individual redirects, since the UI doesn’t provide an option to add a “description” or “comment” to each individual one.
4. Use shortcuts for host redirection if you are not comfortable with Regex
The URL dropdown in screenshots above can be changed to be “Host” or “Path”, they can be very useful for your use case. Even though it’s totally doable through the “URL” option with “Regex Match” in the “Equals” dropdown next to it, it provides easier to use short hand for those new to Regex.
5. Use “Modify Query Parameter” rules instead of redirect to readability
There are times when you want certain query parameters to be included in your requests, maybe you would consider a redirection rule like this:

But this can soon get unreadable when you have a super long URL. And it is easy to make a typo somewhere and not noticing it until 1 hour later there comes the “aha” moment that you wish there’s a spellchecker everywhere in your life … (I’ve been there … multiple times).
Instead, we can use a different rule: Modify query parameters to do just that with more readability and easier control. The example above is pretty like so:

with a few improvements:
- The params are much more readable
- Easier to spot a typo
- More explicit about certain rules, i.e. remove “is_electric” query param, which is not stated (and cannot be stated easily) in the redirection example above
