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Virtual Hosts and Mobile Development

Virtual hosts are such a great tool for web developers to test locally without losing their mind, but web development in 2015 involves testing on far more than a single machine. If your mobile iOS devices are on the same network, here is a simple trick.

  1. Go to System Preferences on your Mac.
  2. Go to the Network panel.
  3. You should see your IP address in here. Mine right now is 10.0.1.6.
  4. Go to Settings on your iOS device.
  5. Go to the Wi-Fi section.
  6. Tap the info icon on your current Wi-Fi network.
  7. Scroll down to the HTTP Proxy and tap Manual.
  8. Enter the IP address you found above into the Server field.
  9. Enter 80 into the Port field.
  10. Go to your browser of choice on the iOS device and go to your virtual host.

Simple enough for quickly testing your websites.