Testing if your site works well on your local machine is always burdensome.
I found a tool that makes it really simple, mkcert:
➜ localhost-https mkcert -install
Using the local CA at "/Users/.../mkcert" ✨
The local CA is now installed in the system trust store! ⚡️
The local CA is now installed in the Firefox trust store (requires browser restart)! 🦊
The local CA is now installed in Java''s trust store! ☕️
➜ localhost-https mkcert localhost
Using the local CA at "/Users/.../mkcert" ✨
Created a new certificate valid for the following names 📜
- "localhost"
The certificate is at "./localhost.pem" and the key at "./localhost-key.pem" ✅
Then you can test with a simple HTML page:
➜ localhost-https cat index.html
───────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ File: index.html
───────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1 │ <html>
2 │ <body>
3 │ HELLO WORLD
4 │ </body>
5 │ </html>
───────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
➜ localhost-https ./node_modules/http-server/bin/http-server -S -C ./localhost.pem -K ./localhost-key.pem [18:12:41]
Starting up http-server, serving ./ through https
Available on:
https://127.0.0.1:8080
https://192.168.1.69:8080
Hit CTRL-C to stop the server
this is the result:
FiloSottile
/
mkcert
A simple zero-config tool to make locally trusted development certificates with any names you'd like.
mkcert
mkcert is a simple tool for making locally-trusted development certificates. It requires no configuration.
$ mkcert -install
Created a new local CA 💥
The local CA is now installed in the system trust store! ⚡️
The local CA is now installed in the Firefox trust store (requires browser restart)! 🦊
$ mkcert example.com "*.example.com" example.test localhost 127.0.0.1 ::1
Created a new certificate valid for the following names 📜
- "example.com"
- "*.example.com"
- "example.test"
- "localhost"
- "127.0.0.1"
- "::1"
The certificate is at "./example.com+5.pem" and the key at "./example.com+5-key.pem" ✅
Using certificates from real certificate authorities (CAs) for development can be dangerous or impossible (for hosts like example.test, localhost or 127.0.0.1), but self-signed certificates cause trust errors. Managing your own CA is the best solution, but usually involves arcane commands, specialized knowledge and manual steps.
mkcert automatically creates and installs a local CA in the system…