How can I access my localhost from my Android device

Question

I m able to access my laptop web server using the Android emulator  I m using 10 0 2 2 portno works well   But when I connect my real Android phone  the phone browser can t connect to the same web server on my laptop  The phone is connected to the laptop using a USB cable  If I run the  adb devices command  I can see my phone   What am I missing

User · Accepted Answer

USB doesn t provide network to mobile device    If both your desktop and phone are connected to the same WiFi  or any other local network   then use your desktop IP address assigned by the router  not localhost and not 127 0 0 1     To find out the IP address of your desktop     type into the command line ipconfig  Windows  or ifconfig  Unix     on Linux the one-liner ifconfig   grep  inet     grep -v 127 0 0 1 will yield only the important stuff there s a bunch of suggestions on how to have a similar output on Windows  there s going to be a bunch of IP s try all of them  except the forementioned localhost and 127 0 0 1    If your phone is connected to the mobile network  then things are going to be harder    Either go hardcore    first find out your router external IP address  https   www google de search q myip  then  on the router  forward some port to  lt your desktop IP gt   lt server port number gt  finally use the external IP address and forwarded port   Otherwise use something like xip io or ngrok   NOTE  The ifconfig command has been deprecated and thus missing by default on Debian Linux  starting from Debian stretch  The new and recommended alternative for examining a network configuration on Debian Linux is ip command  For example to use ip command to display a network configuration run the following   ip address   The above ip command can be abbreviated to   ip a   If you still prefer to use ifconfig as part of your daily sys admin routine  you can easily install it as part of the net-tools package   apt-get install net-tools   Reference is here

User · Answer

Was running into this problem using several different localhost servers  Finally got my app up and running on the phone in seconds just by using the Python simple server  It only takes a few seconds so is worth a try before getting into any more complicated solutions  First  make sure you have Python installed  cmd r and type python for Windows  or   python --version in mac terminal     Next   cd  lt your project root gt     python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000   Then just find the address of your host machine on the network  I used System Preferences Sharing on mac to find it  Tap that into your Android device and should load your index html and you should be good    If not then the problem is something else and you may want to look into some of the other suggested solutions  Good luck     EDIT    Another quick solution to try if you re using Chrome is the Web Server for Chrome extension  I found it a quick and super easy way to get access to localhost on my phone  Just make sure to check Accessible to local network under the Options and it should work on your cell without any problem

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It is actually quite simple    Turn on WiFi Hotspot of your Android phone router and connect your Laptop to your phone Start your server at localhost  I am using WAMP server for Windows  Now open the command prompt and enter    ipconfig   Once you ve done that  you will see something like the following    Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection    Connection-specific DNS Suffix        Link-local IPv6 Address             fe80  80bc e378 19ab e448 11   IPv4 Address                        192 168 43 76   Subnet Mask                         255 255 255 0   Default Gateway                     192 168 43 1    Copy the IPv4 Address  in this case  it is 192 168 43 76  In your mobile browser  simply paste the IPv4 Address     Note  Please set your network as  Home Network   Setting the network as Home Network means that you are allowing your PC to share stuff with other devices on the same network     If you are using Windows 10  this can be done with the following    Open Settings Go to Network  amp  Internet Select WiFi in the left menu Tap on the name of the connected WiFi Set the Network Profile of the network to be Private   If you are having an issue  it is most likely to do with Windows Firewall    Open Control Panel Go to Windows Defender Firewall Tap on Allow an app or feature through Windows Defender Firewall Check whether the app is enabled for Private networks  there should be a tick  If it is not enabled  tap Change settings and tick the checkbox under Private for the app

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Adding a solution for future developers   Copy address of your ip address  right click on your network -  network and sharing-  click on the connection you currently have-  details-  then the address beside ipv4 address is your ip address  note this down somewhere  Go to control panel -  system and security -  windows firewall -  advanced settings -  inbound rules -  new rules  follow the steps to add a port e g 80  its really simple to follow   put your ip address that you noted down  on your phone browser and the port number you created the rule for beside it  e g 192 168 0 2 80 and wala    Possible solution if it doesn t connect  right click network- open network and sharing-  look under view your active connections  under the name of your connection  at the type of connection and click on it if it is public   and make sure to change it to a home network

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Use this in your ubuntu Macbook to get the ip address of your system  Your mobile and system should be in the same network  ip addr   grep inet This will give you an ip address which looks like 192 168 168 46  Use this in your smartphone   Hope this helps

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Port forwarding on Chrome for Android makes it easy to test your development site on mobile  It works by creating a listening TCP port on your mobile device that maps to a particular TCP port on your development machine  Traffic between these ports travels through USB  so the connection doesn t depend on your network configuration    More details here  https   developer chrome com devtools docs remote-debugging port-forwarding

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I found a quick solution to this problem  Try this link  It should help you fix the problem   I only changed one thing  where the tutorial states you change  127 0 0 1  to  All   change it to the IP address your server is running on instead   After that  you should be able to connect to your localhost     Below is a  proofread  copy of the information from the linked page   Step 1  Install the Wamp server  or any other you prefer    This is one of the best servers I know to set up a local server  If you have installed Apache or any other server  ignore this step   Download and install Wamp Server from here   Step 2  Add a new rule for port 80 in Windows Firewall    Open the Control Panel and select Windows Firewall  Select Advanced settings from the left panel of the Windows Firewall setting page  Select Inbound Rules from the left panel  then select New Rule  Select Port and click Next  Select the    Specific local ports    radio button and enter 80 as the port value  Keep Allow the connection unchanged and move to the next step  Keep Profile options unchanged and click Next  Give some nice name to your new rule and click Finish    This will enable port 80 access on local network IP   Step 3  Edit the httpd conf file of the Wamp server to fix the 403 error   We need to edit this file  Otherwise  we will get the 403 forbidden error when we access the localhost through a local network IP    Click on the Wamp server tray icon  Open Apache server sub menu  Select httpd conf  Find this section of configuration in the httpd conf file   Directory    c  wamp www         Possible values for the Options directive are    None        All       or any combination of    Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews     Note that    MultiViews    must be named  explicitly         Options All      doesn   t give it to you      The Options directive is both complicated and important  Please see   http   httpd apache org docs 2 2 mod core html options   for more information    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks      AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in  htaccess files    It can be    All        None     or any combination of the keywords    Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit   AllowOverride all      Controls who can get stuff from this server       onlineoffline tag     don   t remove Order Deny Allow Deny from all Allow from 127 0 0 1    Find and replace    127 0 0 1    with    All     save the file  and restart your Wamp server   Step 4  Find your local network IP    Open the command prompt  Type and enter the ipconfig command  In my case  my local area network address is 10 0 0 2    This is the IP which you need to access your localhost on your Android phone over wifi  To test if it is working  type this IP address in your desktop browser where your localhost server is installed  The browser should display your localhost page successfully  This will assure that this local network IP is now successfully accessible on your Android phone   I hope this tutorial will help you to access your localhost over wifi

User · Answer

use connectify and xampp or equivalent  and type ip address on mobile URL bar to access

User · Answer

Another thing to check is that some routers have issues bridging the requests when both 2 4G and 5G are enabled and the devices are on different frequencies  Trying disabling one of the frequencies so both devices are connected to the same interface

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On linux use ip addr instead of ifconfig since ifconfig is deprecated for many years and not installed by default in recent distros

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Mac OS X users  I achieved this by enabling remote management    Ensure that your phone and laptop are connected to the same WiFi network On Mac  go to System preferences sharing Enable remote management   You will see a message similar to this    Other users can manage your computer using the address some url com   On your Android device  you should now be able to go to some url com  which delegates to localhost on your Mac  You can also use ifconfig to get the IP address of your Mac     Portable solution with ngrok  any OS with Node js   If you don t mind exposing your project with a temporary domain you can use ngrok  Lets say I have an app that runs on localhost 9460 I can simply write  npm install ngrok -g  ngrok http 9460   This will give me    Session Status                online Update                        update available  version 2 2 8  Ctrl-U to update  Version                       2 2 3 Region                        United States  us  Web Interface                 http   127 0 0 1 4040 Forwarding                    http   f7c23d14 ngrok io -  localhost 9460 Forwarding                    https   f7c23d14 ngrok io -  localhost 9460  Connections                   ttl     opn     rt1     rt5     p50     p90                               0       0       0 00    0 00    0 00    0 00   I can now reach https   f7c23d14 ngrok io as a way to remotely view localhost  This is great to share design work or progress with clients     Alternate solution with nginx proxy pass  If you are running something like this through nginx proxy pass it will require a bit more tweaking - this is a hacky approach  but it works for me and I am open to suggestions on improving it    Enable remote management  as mentioned above  Temporarily set the server to listen on port 81 as opposed to 80 Type in the following command    sudo nginx -s reload    Visit http   youripaddress 81   server     listen 80    listen 81       lt -------- add this to expose the app on a unique port   server name     local local  m  example com               Reload and visit http   youripaddress 81

User · Answer

First of all make your machine where server is running IP address static  Enter this static IP address in the android code   Next go to your wifi router s interface and check the left panel  You will see option such as port forwarding forwarding  Click on it and forward port 80  Now edit your htttpd conf file and edit it for   Allow from All    Restart your server  Everything should work fine now    Additionally you can reserve the IP address of your machine so that it is always allocated to you  In the left panel of your router s interface  find DHCP - gt  Address Reservation  click on it  Enter your machine s MAC address and the IP address you have entered in the code  Click on save  This will reserve the given IP address for your machine

User · Answer

On mac run this command in the terminal if you have your server in 8080  echo   rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 8080 - gt  127 0 0 1 port 8080     sudo pfctl -ef -

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First of all connect your phone and computer to common wifi   Then   open command prompt using run as administrator  Give ipconfig command  Which shows wireless lan ip  Use ip port of your server to access in phone

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Solution for Windows   You are not able to view your website  mainly because your firewall   default OS firewall or Antivirus firewall   is preventing incoming connections   On Windows Firewall  To allow incoming connections on specific ports  go to   Control Panel  gt  Windows Defender Firewall  gt  Advanced Settings  gt  Right Click Inbound Rules  gt  Add New Rule  Then    Select  quot Port quot  radio button  Enter the specific port   range you on which you want to enable incoming connections   the port on which your server is running   Select  quot Allow the connection quot  radio button  Click Next   unless you want to change the defaults   Give your rule a name and click Finish    Note  If you are using an Antivirus having a firewall  then the above steps will not work since the Antivirus would have disabled Windows firewall and instead runs its own firewall  In that case  depending on the Antivirus program  go to your Antivirus s Firewall settings and open the port

User · Answer

With the simple solution  just access laptop ip addr port from mobile device  when mobile and laptop are on the same WiFi   I get a ERR CONNECTION REFUSED error  That is  my MacBook seems to refuse the connection attempt from my mobile     ADB Reverse Socket  Android only   This solution works for me  tested with a MacBook     Connect Android mobile device with USB cable to laptop Enable USB Debugging on mobile device On laptop  run adb reverse tcp 4000 tcp 4000   Use your custom port number instead of 4000  Now  on the mobile device  you can navigate to http   localhost 4000   and it will actually connect to the laptop  not the mobile device   See instructions here   The downside is that this works only with a single mobile device at a time  If you want access with another mobile device  you have to first disconnect the first one  disable USB Debugging   connect the new one  enable USB Debugging   and run adb reverse tcp 4000 tcp 4000 again     ngrok  works with all devices   Another solution that should always work is ngrok  as mentioned in other answers   It works over the Internet  and not the local network    It s extremely easy to use   brew cask install ngrok ngrok http 4000   This outputs  among some other information  a line like  Forwarding                    http   4cc5ac02 ngrok io - gt  localhost 4000   Now  you can navigate to http   4cc5ac02 ngrok io on any device that is connected to the Internet  and this URL redirects to localhost 4000 of your laptop   Note that as long as the ngrok command is running  until you hit Ctrl-C   your project is publicly served  Everybody who has the URL can see it

User · Answer

On Windows PC You may not need to do anything else than finding out your IPv4 Address using  ipconfig  command    Step 1   Connect your phone to PC using USB cable  Step 2   Use command  ipconfig  to find out your IPv4 Address  External IP of the Router  e g 192 168 1 5 in my case  Step 3  Just access  192 168 1 5 8080  from your phone browser  It works     Other Env Details    Windows 7  Google Nexus 4  4 2 2   Tomcat Server  Grails Application   You should also make sure that you have the permission to access internet in AndroidManifest file     lt uses-permission android name  android permission INTERNET   gt

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If you re running on Linux this works for me   sudo iptables -F

User · Answer

This is what worked for me  I added another line after the 127 0 0 1 ip to specify the exact local network ip address  not the public ip address  of the device I wanted to use  In my case my Samsung Galaxy S3  As suggested by Bangptit edit the httpd conf file  x being the version numbers   C  wamp bin apache Apache2 x x conf httpd conf  Search for the onlineoffline tag and add the ip of your phone  I found my phones ip address in my routers configuration pages    onlineoffline tag - don t remove   Order Deny Allow  Deny from all  Allow from 127 0 0 1   my phones ip in the line below   Allow from 192 168 1 65   Allow from   1  Allow from localhost   One could extend this to include an entire sub domain too for e g  192 168 1 0 24 etc

User · Answer

Try going to this file   C  wamp bin apache Apache2 2 11 conf httpd conf      onlineoffline tag - don t remove     Order Deny Allow     Allow from all    change it Deny     Allow from 127 0 0 1   And change 10 0 2 2 to your IP address

User · Answer

Although one answer has been accepted but this worked for me    Make sure both your computer and android device are on same network  get your computer s ip address   in case of mac type ifconfig inside terminal and look for en0 en1 - gt  inet it should be something like 19  16  1 4    on windows  use  ipconfig   Open your mobile settings and go to network-  long press your wifi network-  modify network -  scroll down to advanced options -  chose proxy manual and in proxy hostname type your address i e  19  16  1 4 inside port enter your port  and save it  search for what is my ip in google chrome  and get your ip  lets say it is 1   1   15  2   try accessing  1   1   15  2   port  from your mobile device    It is as simple as this

User · Answer

This solution is usable when your mobile device and computer is not in same network   You need to use port forwarding in this case  In the Google chrome inspect window  chrome   inspect  You can see the connected devices    Click on the port fowading button  and set a random port say 3000 to the port which your laptop uses say 8080     now use localhost 3000 from device to access the localhost 8080 or whatever ip portno  in the laptop  You can check it in the mobile browser  Try localhost 3000 in the mobile browser  Make sure to check the  Enable port forwarding  checkbox in the  Port forwarding settings  window

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As this is an old question  there is a new way to do this that is really really simple  Download the ADB Chrome Extension and then follow these instructions   https   developers google com chrome-developer-tools docs remote-debugging

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I used this process    Install Fiddler on the PC Set up PC and Android device following these excellent instructions Simply go to the browser on the Android device and type in http   ipv4 fiddler to access the localhost   Note that this process requires you to change the WiFi settings on the Android device at the start and end of every session  I found this less painful then rooting my Android device

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Having a netconfig xml and assign it in the manifest xml is the best work around  This will bypass the androids default https only contraint

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You may have your web server listening on your loopback interface and not on your network interface  Major signs of this are    Hits on 127 0 0 1 and localhost  from localhost or Android emulator  work Hits on 192 168 xxx xxx do not work  whether from localhost  LAN  or WAN   I talk more about diagnosing this and fixing this in an answer here

User · Answer

The easier way to default localhost is to use http   localhost port  This works in a laptop and Android as well    If it does not work  then in android set the default IP of your phone to 127 0 0 1 port      Open terminal and type  -   hostname -i   127 0 0 1  hostname -I   198 168

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Run CMD as administrator   and on CMD screen type ipconfig and the screen will appear with text   as this photo    and you can access your localhost using this ip  you have to be connected to same network as your pc connected to

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The above didn t work for me  This did for Mac   In terminal   ifconfig   Then take the number after inet and put it in your mobile browser

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Simple  First and foremost make your your android device and computer is connected on thee same network e g router Open command prompt by windows R and search for cmd then open  On the command type ipconfig and get the ipv4 address   NB  Firewall blocks access of your computer along network so you need to turn off firewall for the network if either public or private    How to turn off firewall Open control panel   System and security   windows firewall   on the left pane select turn on and off windows firewall    Then select turn off windows firewall not recommended   You are done  then open your mobile device and run your ip address 192 168 1 xxx

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EASIEST way  this worked flawlessly for me  is to locally host your site at 0 0 0 0  lt port no gt  and to access it using mobile devices  use  lt local ipv4 address gt   lt port no gt   lt path gt  in browser    To know your local ipv4 address  just type ipconfig in cmd ANY device connected to the SAME network can access this url

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Personally I do not insist to use localhost when using device  there is no easy solution   Just start the activity where you connect to localhost where you can use emulator  Whatever info you have to get from device can be generated with ease and can be sent to activity as parameter

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There is however a far better solution  You can access your host machine with the IP address  10 0 2 2   This has been designed in this way by the Android team  So your webserver can perfectly run at localhost and from your Android app you can access it via  http   10 0 2 2 8080

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Ngrok is the best solution  If you re developing PHP then I recommend installing Laravel Valet  It has MacOS and Linux versions  then you may use valet share command  If you re developing any frontend tech and need to share a port like 3000 then use ngrok directly ngrok http 3000

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A solution to connect my mobile device to my wamp server based on my laptop   First  wifi is not a router  So to connect my mobile device to my wamp server based on localhost on my laptop  I need a router   I have downloaded and installed a free virtual router  https   virtualrouter codeplex com    Configuring it is really simple    right click on virtual router icon in System Tray click on Configure virtual router  fill a password  if your internet connection is in ethernet  choose Shared connection   Ethernet  Then set wifi on on your laptop and device On your device connect to the virtual router network name   Then you can connect to your laptop via your device by launching a browser and fill the IPV4 address of your laptop   to find it on windows  type in cmd   ipconfig   and find ipv4 address   You should see your wamp server home page

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Using a USB cable    for example  if you use WAMP server    1  Install your Android drivers on your PC and download portable Android Tethering Reverse Tool and connect your Android device through the Reverse Tool application   2  Click on WAMP icon   Put Online  after restarting    3  Open your IP in the Android browser  i e  http   192 168 1 22 OR http   164 92 124 42    To find your local IP address  click Start Run cmd and type ipconfig and your IP address will show up in the output   That s all   Now you can access  open  localhost from Android

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its very simple   - GOTO command line  Window   R  type cmd   - type ipconfig   that will show the current IP address of your PC - write taht IP address on your Android Phone s browser with  80 e g  http   192 168 x x 80   Done  localhost will appear on your Phone

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finally done in Ubuntu   i am running nodejs server on localhost 8080  1  open terminal type ifconfig     you will get ip something like this    inet addr 192 168 43 17   2  now simply put url address like this         192 168 43 17 8080   8080 port coming from localhost port number       ex    192 168 43 17 8080 fetch

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What worked for me   target  debug an windows server app running on localhost 99999 from an client app running on android phone     phone and pc connected on the same network e g  192 168 1 xxx   connected via wifi in my case  enable port 99999 in windows firewall run in cmd as administrator  netsh http add urlacl url http     99999  user Everyone   then the service app url  my dev machine ip 99999 path to service  was accessible from the phone

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ngrok lets you put your localhost onto a temporary server and is very simple to set up  I ve provided some steps here that can be found in the link    Download the ngrok zip from the link above Open the zip Run your server locally and take note of the port number In the terminal  go to the folder where ngrok lives and type ngrok http  port number    You ll see a little dashboard in your terminal with an address pointing to your localhost  Point your app to that address and build to your device

[android] How can I access my localhost from my Android device?

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