April 2026 – AgileAdam.com

Every time I needed a public tunnel for local development, I was repeating the same handful of steps. Localtunnel is a great free alternative to ngrok, and it deserves a proper DDEV command. Follow the steps to make one:

Step 1: Create this file in your project’s directory: .ddev/commands/host/localtunnel

#!/usr/bin/env bash

## Description: Start a localtunnel for this DDEV project
## Usage: lt [subdomain]
## Example: ddev lt myname-mysite

set -e

SUBDOMAIN=${1:-${DDEV_SITENAME}}

# Get the HTTPS host port from docker
PORT=$(docker inspect "ddev-${DDEV_SITENAME}-web" \
--format '{{range $p, $conf := .NetworkSettings.Ports}}{{if eq $p "80/tcp"}}{{(index $conf 0).HostPort}}{{end}}{{end}}')

if [ -z "$PORT" ]; then
  echo "Could not determine HTTPS port for ${DDEV_SITENAME}. Is DDEV running?"
  exit 1
fi

echo "Starting localtunnel for ${DDEV_SITENAME} on port ${PORT}..."
echo "Subdomain: https://${SUBDOMAIN}.loca.lt"
echo ""

lt --port="${PORT}" --local-host "127.0.0.1" --subdomain="${SUBDOMAIN}"

#!/usr/bin/env bash

## Description: Start a localtunnel for this DDEV project

## Usage: lt [subdomain]

## Example: ddev lt myname-mysite

set -e

SUBDOMAIN=${1:-${DDEV_SITENAME}}

# Get the HTTPS host port from docker

PORT=$(docker inspect "ddev-${DDEV_SITENAME}-web" \

--format '{{range $p, $conf := .NetworkSettings.Ports}}{{if eq $p "80/tcp"}}{{(index $conf 0).HostPort}}{{end}}{{end}}')

if [ -z "$PORT" ]; then

echo "Could not determine HTTPS port for ${DDEV_SITENAME}. Is DDEV running?"

exit 1

echo "Starting localtunnel for ${DDEV_SITENAME} on port ${PORT}..."

echo "Subdomain: https://${SUBDOMAIN}.loca.lt"

echo ""

lt --port="${PORT}" --local-host "127.0.0.1" --subdomain="${SUBDOMAIN}"

Step 2: chmod +x .ddev/commands/host/localtunnel

Step 3: Use it like this: ddev lt adam-mysite

Of course, this will only work if you have localtunnel installed ( brew install localtunnel ).

When you run the command it’ll show you the resulting URL (e.g., https://adam-mysite.local.lt).

When finished, hit CTRL-C (on a Mac, at least) to close the session.