No more localhost port juggling

If you've ever worked on multiple instances of the same app at the same time, you know the pain.

localhost:3000, localhost:3001, localhost:3002... which one was the staging branch again? Which one is the bug repro? Which one am I actually testing right now?

I've been running 4 parallel admin instances of Webiny lately — different branches, different experiments, all going at once. Keeping track of which port is which was driving me a little crazy.

Then I stumbled onto portless by Vercel Labs.

What it does

Portless lets you map local apps to nice https://<name>.localhost/ URLs instead of remembering arbitrary port numbers. HTTPS, custom subdomain, no /etc/hosts editing, no proxy config to fight with.

My setup

I have 4 folders — wby-next1, wby-next2, wby-next3, wby-next4 — each running its own admin instance.

With portless wired up, starting the admin in any of them automatically gives me:

• wby-next1 → https://admin1.localhost/

• wby-next2 → https://admin2.localhost/

• wby-next3 → https://admin3.localhost/

• wby-next4 → https://admin4.localhost/

That's it. No more checking which terminal is on which port. No more squinting at the URL bar trying to figure out which instance I'm looking at.

Why this is nice

It sounds small, but the mental overhead of "wait, which one was 3001 again?" adds up fast when you're context-switching between instances all day. Now the URL itself tells me what I'm looking at.

Tiny tool, big quality-of-life win. 💥