How to use a secure public url for your localhost [Dev Purpose] [ngrok]

Maybe you are developing a web application and you want to expose your application running on your computer to the internet. Normally you will have to do a bunch of configurations to your webserver to let outside traffic even get in. Not only that, you might need to configure your firewalls, routers, etc as well.

Today with this post I am going to show you a simple yet powerful tool I always use to access my locally hosted application through the internet while developing them.

The name of the tool is “ngrok” and what it basically does is providing a secure public URL for a limited time slot for your localhost. The steps are really simple.

01) First, download and install ngrok from https://ngrok.com/

02) Now start whatever your localhost server.

03) Now, open your terminal (command prompt in windows) and execute the following command.

ngrok http <port_number_of_your_server>

04) Now, you can see the public URL information from the terminal window.

Just copy that URL and try accessing it from your web browser!