HTTP headers / response header

Transfer-Encoding

Transfer-Encoding: chunked

What it does

Streams the body in length-prefixed chunks when the total size is unknown upfront — common for dynamically generated responses and SSE-ish streams.

The gotcha

Mutually exclusive with Content-Length; some old proxies (and 411-answering servers) refuse chunked requests.

Debugging headers on a phone

The fastest way to see what Transfer-Encoding is actually doing is to send the request and read both sides raw — ReqPad shows auto-generated and custom headers for every request, on all six protocols, with history. Related references: status codes · WWW-Authenticate · Content-Encoding · ETag · Last-Modified · Expires · Location

Inspect Transfer-Encoding on a live request.

Build the request, send it, read raw headers and timing — from your iPhone. Free to start.