Startup wizard

Whenever you launch Burp, the startup wizard appears. This is where you select various startup options, most notably which project you're working on and which configuration you want to use. The first time you launch Burp, you are also prompted to activate your license.

• Activating your license
• Selecting a project
• Selecting a configuration

Selecting a project

Once you have activated your license, the first step in the startup wizard is to select or create a Burp project to work with. Depending on which edition of Burp Suite you're using, you can choose from the following options:

• Temporary project - This option is useful for quick tasks where your work doesn't need to be saved. All data is held in memory and is lost when you close Burp. This is the only option available in Burp Suite Community Edition.
• New project on disk - This creates a new project that will store its data in a Burp project file. This file holds all of the data and configuration for the project. This data is saved incrementally as you work. Note that you can rename a project later via the Burp menu.
• Open existing project - This reopens an existing project from a Burp project file. A list of recently opened projects is shown for quick selection. By default, when you open an existing project, any ongoing automated tasks will initially be paused. This is to avoid sending any unintentional requests to previously configured targets. You can change the default behavior in Burp Suite's User options, under the Misc tab.

Opening a project from a different Burp installation

If you open an existing project that was created by a different installation of Burp, you will be prompted to decide whether to take full ownership of the project.

This is necessary because Burp stores an identifier within the project file that is used to retrieve any ongoing Burp Collaborator interactions that are associated with the project. If two instances of Burp share the same identifier in ongoing work, then some Collaborator-based issues may be missed or incorrectly reported. You should only take full ownership of a project from a different Burp installation if no other instance of Burp is working on that project.

Selecting a configuration

The next step in the startup wizard is to select which configuration files you want to use for the project. Configuration files are used to store custom configurations for different aspects of Burp, including user or project settings. For example, you might have a specific configuration file with different project settings tailored to each client you're working for. Some bug bounty programs also provide a Burp configuration file that you can use to automatically set the correct scope for the project.

When you start out with Burp, you will likely just use the default settings initially. As you become more familiar with the different options, you can save your own configuration files as you go so that you can reuse them in other projects.

You can choose from the following options for the project configuration:

• Use Burp defaults - This opens the project using Burp's default options.
• Use options saved with project - This is only available when reopening an existing project. It opens the project using the options that were saved in the selected project file.
• Load from configuration file - This opens the project using the options contained in the selected Burp configuration file. Note that only project-level options in the configuration file will be loaded. Any user-level options will be ignored. A list of recently used configuration files is shown for quick selection.