[android] Accessing localhost of PC from USB connected Android mobile device

I have an android device (Samsung galaxy tab) connected to my PC via USB .

I want to use WebServices and run a web page which is located on my local xampp server of my PC on my android device .

I can achieve it if I have both , my PC and android device , connected on the same wireless network .

However is it possible to access the localhost page without any wireless connection , using only USB connection .

(PS : This same scenario works when I run the app on an emulator and use the ip 10.0.2.2 to access the localhost on my PC)

I very much liked John's answer, but I'd like to give it with some changes to those that want to test some client//server configuration by running a client TCP on the USB connected Mobile and a server on the local PC.

First it's quite obvious that the 10.0.2.2 won't work because this is a REAL hardware mobile and not a simulator.

So Follow John's instructions:

• Unplug all network cables on PC and turn off wifi.
• Turn off wifi on the android device
• Connect android device to pc via USB

• Turn on the "USB Tethering" (USB Modem/ USB Cellular Modem / USB ????? ????? ??????) in the android menu. (Under networks->more...->Tethering and portable hotspot")

  • This USB connection will act as a DHCP server for you single PC connection, so it'll assign your PC a dedicated (dynamic) IP in its local USB network. Now all you have to do is tell the client application this IP and port.

• Get the IP of your PC (that has been assigned by the USB tether cable.) (open command prompt and type "ipconfig" then look for the IP that the USB network adapter has assigned, in Linux its ifconfig or Ubuntu's "Connection information" etc..)

• Tell the application to connect to that IP (i.e. 192.168.42.87) with something like (Java - client side):

  String        serverIP      = "192.168.42.87";
  int           serverPort    = 5544;
  InetAddress   serverAddress = InetAddress.getByName(serverIP);
  Socket        socket         = new Socket(serverAddress, serverPort);
  ...
  

  Enjoy..

Google posted a solution for this kind of problem here.

The steps:

• Connect your Android device and your development machine with USB debugging enabled
• Open Chrome in your development machine, open new tab, right click in the new browser tab, click inspect
• Click the three dots icon on right top side , -> More Tools, Remote Devices.
• Look at bottom of the screen, make sure your device name is appeared on the list with Green colored dot.
• Look below at the settings part, check the Port forwarding mark
• Add rule. Example, if your python web server is running on your machine localhost:5000 and you want to access it from your device port 3333, you type 3333 on the left part, and type localhost:5000, and click add rule.
• Voila, now you can access your web server from your device. Try open new browser tab, and visit http://localhost:3333 from your device

How to Easily access LocalHost in Actual Android Device -> Connect your pc with the android device via USB

1. Go to Chrome inspection click 'f12' or Control+Shift+C

Chrome Inspection tool

2. Check the bottom of the chrome inspection tool.

3. Now go to settings in Remote Device Tab.

Remote Devices Tab

4. check on "Discover USB Device" option as well as check on "Port Forwarding" option.

5. Now Click on Add Rules, Enter Any Device Port e.g(4880) and in Local Address Enter the Actual Address of the local host in my case e.g (127.0.0.1:480)

6. After Adding the Rule go to your android studio -> inside your code URL(http://127.0.0.1:4880). Remember to change the port from 480 -> 4880.

7. Go to Remote Device Tab in Chrome and Click on your connected Device. Add New URL(127.0.0.1:4880) Inspect the Android Device Chrome Browser

Check your Actual Device Chrome Browser and start Debugging the code on Actual Android device.

I did this on a windows computer and it worked perfectly!

Turn on USB Tethering in your mobile. Type ipconfig in the command prompt in your computer and find the ipv4 for "ethernet adapter local area connection x" (mostly the first one) Now go to your mobile browser, type that ipv4 with the port number of your web application. eg:- 192.168.40.142:1342

It worked with those simple steps!

Here is a piece of my Android app's code:

This app is able to communicate with a HTTP get-post model between a servlet running on a server and an Android device plugged in USB-Debuggable mode (because the app was in developing progress).

I also can run the app over Wi-Fi when the server, Tomcat Apache 7, running on (when the app development was finished).

To get the IP address of yours

1. Go to Command Prompt
2. Type ipconfig
3. Hit enter

In the list, IPv4 Address is your IP.

1. Make sure you have adb installed on the computer, USB debugging enabled on the phone, and the phone has allowed access to the computer. Plug the phone into the computer via USB cable, and make sure it's visible (it should show up in the Bash command adb devices.
2. In your computer's Chrome browser, open chrome://inspect/#devices, click the "Port forwarding" button, check "Enable port forwarding", and add the port on the computer that you want to be accessible from the phone (detailed instructions here). You'll need to keep open the tab running chrome://inspect/#devices.
3. In your phone's browser, navigate to localhost:[port_number], and it should display whatever is running on the computer.

This works on Windows and Ubuntu Linux, and should work on Mac as well.

Connecting android phone via USB cable and accessing http server on the Computer.

1. Firewall - switch it off, once everything works you can add a rule under Inbound rules, enable Apache HTTP Server (UDP and TCP) (or whatever HTTP server you're using) Warning - if you switch off the firewall, your computer becomes vulnerable to internet attacks. So switch off internet and disconnect from network first. You don't need to be on the Internet for this to work, as you're connecting two devices on local network.

2. Plug in the USB cable. If networking window pops up, select Home Network. If it doesn't pop up it's probably set to Public (which won't work), so go to: Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center (in win7) and set it to Home Network there. It might give you a next screen after you press it to share Pictures, Music... just click cancel on it. On the main screen Home Network will still be active.

3. You need the Computer's IP, localhost or other aliases don't work. To get the IP of your machine, start the Windows command line shell (press Windows Key + R and type cmd), the black command prompt window should pop up, type: "ipconfig" and hit enter. Now look for

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.###.### That's the IP that your phone assigned to your computer

4. Now you should be done, in the phone's browser, try accessing a test html file from your computer's server it should display fine.

5. Now that everything is working you'll probably want to enable the firewall and Internet access on your computer. Now try accessing your http server again. It probably won't work. Depending on your setup you might get a popup asking you to add a rule to allow it, but if you don't, just add it yourself. Start the windows firewall and go to Inbound Rules (because it's a server) and add New Rule. Select "Program". Locate the exe of your http server, and in the next screen make sure Allow is selected. Try connecting again, and now it should work. If not it's probably because you selected wrong exe. You can even go more advanced to restrict outside usage (because now everyone on the internet can access it if they have your Internet IP address) To restrict access you can right-click on the new rule you've just created, click Properties, and go to Scope tab and change things there accordingly.

   Note for Android developers, now in your android code, you have to use "http://", otherwise it won't work. For example: MyAsyncTask.execute("http://192.168.123.123/test.html")

Part II -- Setting IP to fixed/static.

Now that things work, every time you unplug the cable and plug it back in, your IP will change. And if you are using it somewhere like inside a code, you'll have to update it every time! Solution I've come up with is to set the IP to static.

1. Having the phone connected and tethered, go back to Network and Sharing Center and click on the Local Area connection "Connections:"

2. On the next screen select Properties, then highlight IP 4 and press properties there and click "Use the following IP address"
3. Put Default Gateway and Subnet Mask exactly as it was in the ipconfig, and for the IP Address, only change the last 3 digits to anything from 1 to 255

That IP will be your new fixed/static IP and it will remain the same next time you plug the phone.

I've read numerous forums and tried play apps but not found a solution until now.

My scenario I believe is similar to yours, but I will clarify to help others. I have a locally hosted website and web services to be used by my android application. I need to have this working on the road for demonstration with only my laptop and no network connection.

Note: Using my iPhone as a wifi hotspot and connecting both my pc and my android device worked, but the iPhone 4S connection is slow and dropped out regularly.

My solution is as follows:

• Unplug network cables on PC and turn off wifi.
• Turn off wifi on android device
• Connect android to pc via USB
• Turn on "USB Tethering" in the android menu. (Under networks->more...->Tethering and portable hotspot")
• Get the IP of your computer that has been assigned by the USB tether cable. (open command prompt and type "ipconfig" then look for the IP that the USB network adapter has assigned)
• Open a browser on the PC using the IP address found instead of localhost to test. i.e. http://192.168.1.1/myWebSite
• Open a browser on the android and test it works

Problem I faced maybe it will help some one, I was working long time where my pc and android device connected to the same WiFi network and the android device connected via the IPV4 address of the pc with opened port 8080 trought the fire wall.

ONE DAY : I installed Genymotion emulator in order to debug UI on different screens. THANKS to Genymotion/Virtualbox network configurations it ruined my WiFi adapter.

The fix was to reconfigure IPV4/TCP settings on the WiFi netwrok adapter :

Check for the USB connection type options. You should have one called "Internet pass through". That will let your phone use the same connection as your PC.

Hello you can access your xampp localhost by

1. Control panel -->
2. windows defender firewall -->
3. Advance setting (on left side) --> Inbound Rules --> New Rule --> Port --> in specific local port write your Apache ports --> next --> next then you can access your localhost by using local PC IP address: