ngrok, a service to help you get a public URL for your local webserver

If you are looking for options to test your web app hosted on your own machine (e.g., laptop) remotely with someone, I recommend using a service called ngrok.

https://ngrok.com/

It has many usages, but in the context of testing an app hosted on your own machine, the most important part is giving you a public URL that will redirect all the requests to your local webserver (e.g., Apache, Nginx, or whatever server you are running). You can give this URL to a testing participant without the need to host the app on a remote server.

For instance, if you are testing your app using a sever on your machine, typically you can access your app in a URL like:

http://localhost:3000/?study=11

Using ngrok, you will have a dynamically generated URL like the following:

https://3ebe3c019867.ngrok.io/

The service will redirect requests to https://3ebe3c019867.ngrok.io to http://localhost:3000

You can then share the following link with your testing participant for the participant to use your app.

https://3ebe3c019867.ngrok.io/?study=11

I have used it in my research for 3 studies , and so far, it is pretty reliable.

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