Add -- --host to the end of your package manager's start command. Note the extra hyphens!

As a follow-up to my blog on viewing localhost on mobile, I thought I would share how to do the same with Vite specifically. A recent task I completed at work was migrating healthequitytracker.org from create-react-app to Vite. In another article, I'll share the details of how this cut our CI build time by 75%, saving the team over 25 hours per month 🚀, but for now, I'll discuss the not-so-obvious way you can have Vite expose the local server's actual IP address (allowing you to view on another device as explained in my other blog post).

Updating your package.json scripts

"scripts": {
...
 "start": "vite -- --host"
...
}

Vite politely gives you the message Network: use --host to expose when you run the dev server, however it doesn't explain HOW to use that flag. Most likely you have a package.json folder inside your project, and in that JSON is a property called "scripts". These are the scripts that run when you start your local server with npm run start or npm run dev, or whatever your team has set up. If you were running the Vite command directly (and not via npm scripts), you would use the flag as they write: --host, however, to pass the flag along via npm to Vite, you must include the additional double-hyphen, making the needed flag -- --host. By adding that flagged-flag to your script command, you'll tell the script to pass along the flag to Vite, which will then automatically expose the local host address when the server starts up.

Directly from the command line

You can also use this flagged-flag directly on the command line if you only want to expose the IP a single time and not by default, so instead of using npm run dev you would use npm run dev -- --host

Now that you have the address, you can easily view the development server directly on your mobile device.

And yes, if you look closely, I am pleased to finally be working on a feature that will kill a UI carousel that has been in place for far too long. If you're wondering why this is exciting to me, check out Should I Use A Carousel?