I'm pretty sure Chrome, at least, doesn't support SOCKS yet at all.

I was trying to make a shell script just the other day that would set up a SSH SOCKS proxy to a remote box and launch a browser using it, but couldn't do it from the command line in either Firefox or Chrome (didn't try a custom profile). Furthermore, I couldn't get it working in Chrome at all (shame; Firefox is more sluggish, and Opera won't even start on my box).

Chrome (under both Windows & Linux - not sure about OS X) can use SOCKS - I use it regularly.

I'm unsure how to make it do remote DNS look-ups though.

Opera cannot do SOCKS.

One problem with Chrome is that its proxy config interface really is just interfacing with the GNOME desktop-wide proxy settings. So it's impossible to have Chrome use multiple proxies or to only have one instance of Chrome use a proxy, but another instance not -- even if both instances have completely separate user data directories -- and all proxy changes are instantaneous across all Chrome instances. (At least for Chromium 5.0.391.0 on Linux)

Try the proxy switchy extension - it should at least make it very fast to switch proxies.

Yeah, I got it to work now, thanks to google. Hadn't realized that it needs a) a new session and b) an environment variable set.

  function remotebrowse() {
    export SOCKS_SERVER=localhost:5432
    ssh -fNTD 5432 remote
    google-chrome --user-data-dir=/tmp/chrome $1 &
  }

I get some error messages, but it seems to work.

Really? I just the the GUI to set it (Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04, Windows XP, Vista & 7)

I don't have a GUI (Xubuntu 9.10), and I don't want to set it permanently. Just so I can get at some ip-restricted content from home.

Chrome on OS X can use SOCKS, but not explicitly for Chrome, since the operating system manages the connections under System Preferences > Network > Advanced > Proxies.

Using this method, will OS/X use the remote machine for DNS lookups or my ISP?