How can I access my localhost from my Android devi

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?

Answer 1

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.

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ADB Reverse Socket (Android only)

This solution works for me (tested with a MacBook):

1. Connect Android mobile device with USB cable to laptop
2. Enable USB Debugging on mobile device
3. On laptop, run adb reverse tcp:4000 tcp:4000
   • Use your custom port number instead of 4000
4. 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.

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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 -> 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.

Answer 2

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".

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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"

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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 <your desktop IP>:<server port number>
• finally use the external IP address and forwarded port

Otherwise use something like xip.io or ngrok.