Let’s say you need your local Laravel server to be accessed from another device. This is where the ngrok tool comes in handy; it’s great for testing webhooks, 3rd-party API integrations, and so on. The procedure is straightforward, but there may be some pitfalls along the way, which we’ll discuss.

# Project Setup

For this tutorial I’ll be using laravel 12 with inertia and the vue starter kit.

Install a new Laravel project and choose the Vue starter kit:

laravel new laravel-ngrok

And after running composer run dev, we have a regular Laravel web app with simple authentication functionality.

# Installing ngrok

Create an account at ngrok.

Download and install ngrok based on your operating system (in my case it’s linux) here: Setup & Installation.

Expose your local app: ngrok http PORT_NUMBERFor example, if it is listening on port 8000, run:

ngrok http 8000

# Fixing Common Issues

Now you’ll have a url that looks something like this: https://eb5e487d234d.ngrok-free.app.

You should put that url as the APP_URL the .env file.

APP_URL=https://eb5e487d234d.ngrok-free.app

Now we should force HTTPS for the ngrok domain; I’m going to do that using a middleware.

First, let’s make a middleware:

php artisan make:middleware NgrokForceHttpsMiddleware

app/Http/Middleware/NgrokForceHttpsMiddleware.php:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\URL;

class NgrokForceHttpsMiddleware
{
    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Closure(\Illuminate\Http\Request): (\Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response)  $next
     */
    public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response
    {
        URL::forceHttps($this->isNgrokRequest($request->getHost()));

        return $next($request);
    }

    private function isNgrokRequest(string $host): bool
    {
        if (str_ends_with($host, '.ngrok-free.app')) {
            return true;
        }

        return false;
    }
}

Finally, add the middleware in bootstrap/app.php:

->withMiddleware(function (Middleware $middleware) {
    $middleware->append(NgrokForceHttpsMiddleware::class);

    // ...
})

Congrats! Your local development server is now accessible from anywhere on the internet through a secure HTTPS tunnel.