Installing ngrok on Mac

ngrok-installation.md

#Installing ngrok on OSX

1. Download ngrok
2. Unzip it to your Applications directory
3. Create a symlink (instructions below)

Creating a symlink to ngrok

Run the following two commands in Terminal to create the symlink.

# cd into your local bin directory
cd /usr/local/bin

# create symlink
ln -s /Applications/ngrok ngrok

This will allow you to run the ngrok command from any directory while in the terminal. Without the symlink, you would need to either cd into the Applications directory (or wherever you installed the executable) or reference ngrok with its full path every time (e.g. /Applications/ngrok 5000)

Using ngrok

The easiest way to use ngrok to tunnel into your localhost is if your local project is running on a specific port (e.g. not using named vhosts). You just run ngrok http [port number].

You can quickly boot up a local webserver using ruby. cd into the project's root directory and run ruby -run -e httpd . -p [port number].

ngrok http localhost:8080

to get the tunnel link that should redirect to http://localhost:8080