Every local project gets a real address.

Yes — move the project's Reach to "Internet" and you get a temporary HTTPS link anyone can open: a client, a colleague in another city, or a webhook provider like Stripe. Nothing to install, and they don't need an account or your Wi-Fi. The link carries a secret key, so anyone who reaches the address without it sees a page that names nothing. It expires after an hour, and dies the moment you switch it off or quit. Licensed feature; needs no setup beyond that one control.

Only if you switch it on for that project, one project at a time — it's off by default. Then dashboard.local opens on your phone or a colleague's laptop with no setup on their end. Everything you didn't switch on is refused without revealing that it exists.

No. The tunnel runs between your Mac and Cloudflare's network, so Cloudflare carries the traffic and terminates the TLS — we never see it. Our server's only involvement is handing your Mac a permanent address the first time you ever share, which needs your licence key and nothing else. It never learns your project names, your ports, or when a link is used.

For showing someone your own dev server from a Mac — yes, with a different shape: ngrok exposes a port, Localdock shares a project that already has a name, behind a key-gated link that expires in an hour, with nothing for the recipient to install. It's not a replacement for production ingress or always-on tunnels. The honest version, both directions: Localdock vs ngrok.

Yes — that's who it's built for. Names stay stable whatever port an agent's server lands on, and the app ships an MCP server with three tools — list_ports, get_free_port and cleanup — so parallel sessions stop colliding on ports and stop “fixing” code that was never broken. More on the workflow: Localdock for AI coding agents.

No setup at all. Any *.localhost name already resolves to your own machine — that's a web standard, handled by macOS and every browser. Localdock listens on port 80, reads the name you asked for, and forwards you to whatever port that project's server is on.

No. No hosts file, no dnsmasq, no sudo. Install it, start a server, it has a name.

From your project folders and container names, so most things are named correctly before you touch anything. Renaming is one click — type a new name, press return. A name another project already uses gets refused with a reason instead of silently stealing the address.

Yes. Localdock adds an address, it never takes one away. Your server keeps its port and keeps answering on it, so nothing in your setup has to change — and if Localdock isn't running, you simply lose the pretty name.

Yes. WebSockets, HMR, server-sent events and streaming all pass through untouched, because Localdock reads the name and then forwards raw TCP — it reads no further into your traffic and rewrites none of it.

Then Localdock steps aside and serves on 7777 instead — your URLs become dashboard.localhost:7777, and settings tells you which port is live. Nothing breaks, and you can pick any port you like.

Nothing about your projects is ever sent to us. Names, ports and paths stay local, and the only call carrying anything about you is the license check — license key, an instance ID, your device name, nothing else. If you switch on sharing for a project, that project becomes reachable from your own network, which is the point; it still doesn't pass through us.

The moment your payment clears you land on a download page with your licence key on it, and the same key is emailed to the address you paid with. Paste it into Localdock and you're done — no account, no waiting.

No subscription — $9 once, single device, version 1 updates included, no account. macOS 14 and later only.