localtunnel exposes your localhost to the world for easy testing and sharing! No need to mess with DNS or deploy just to have others test out your changes.
This repo is the server component. If you are just looking for the CLI localtunnel app, see (https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel).
The default localtunnel client connects to the localtunnel.me
server. You can, however, easily set up and run your own server. In order to run your own localtunnel server you must ensure that your server can meet the following requirements:
- You can set up DNS entries for your
domain.tld
and*.domain.tld
(orsub.domain.tld
and*.sub.domain.tld
). - The server can accept incoming TCP connections for any non-root TCP port (i.e. ports over 1000).
The above are important as the client will ask the server for a subdomain under a particular domain. The server will listen on any OS-assigned TCP port for client connections.
# pick a place where the files will live
git clone git:https://github.com/defunctzombie/localtunnel-server.git
cd localtunnel-server
npm install
# server set to run on port 1234
bin/server --port 1234
The localtunnel server is now running and waiting for client requests on port 1234. You will most likely want to set up a reverse proxy to listen on port 80 (or start localtunnel on port 80 directly).
You can now use your domain with the --host
flag for the lt
client.
lt --host https://sub.example.tld:1234 --port 9000
You will be assigned a URL similar to qdci.sub.example.com:1234
.
If your server is acting as a reverse proxy (i.e. nginx) and is able to listen on port 80, then you do not need the :1234
part of the hostname for the lt
client.