Keep in mind that HTTP gateways are provided just for convenience. Due to WebExtension API limitations embedded node can't act as a local HTTP gateway and extension falls back to public gateway. I imagine it was what you were experiencing.

Use window.ipfs property to play with pure IPFS (without HTTP gateway): window.ipfs.id(console.log) window.ipfs.add(Buffer.from('hello')).then(console.log) window.ipfs.cat('/ipfs/QmWfVY9y3xjsixTgbd9AorQxH7VtMpzfx2HaWtsoUYecaX').then((data) => console.log(new String(data))) More info: https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-companion/blob/master/...

I think you can click "switch to local node" or something like that. At least that's what I did with my external gateway and it worked and started to redirect locally.