sher: The Localhost Sharing Tool You Haven't Heard Of

You haven't heard of sher, but you should be using it daily.

Every developer faces this: you're building something locally in Vite, Next.js, or Astro, and you need to share it with a teammate, client, or just test it on your phone. The standard answer is ngrok, but ngrok requires account setup, has usage limits, and feels heavy for quick sharing.

What sher Does Differently

sher generates instant preview URLs for your local development projects with one command. No accounts, no complex setup, no mental overhead. You run sher in your project directory, and you get a URL you can share immediately.

It works with all the frameworks you're actually using: Vite, Next.js, Astro, and anything else running a local dev server. The tool auto-detects your setup and just works.

Why This Matters

The best tools solve daily friction, not grand problems. sher solves the micro-friction of sharing work-in-progress. Instead of deploying to Vercel for a quick preview or explaining why your localhost:3000 doesn't work on someone else's machine, you just run one command.

This is the kind of tool that saves you 30 seconds fifty times a day, which adds up to real productivity gains.

ngrok vs sher

ngrok dominates mindshare because it was first and handles complex networking scenarios. But for the common case — "I need to share this local app right now" — sher is simpler:

• ngrok: Sign up → install → configure → authenticate → run
• sher: Run

For most developers, most of the time, sher's approach is better.

The Polish Matters

What's impressive about sher isn't just the simplicity — it's that someone took the time to make video demos and create a polished landing page for what could have been a quick GitHub repo. This suggests real attention to the developer experience.

The freemium model also makes sense. Free tier handles most use cases, paid tier presumably adds features for teams or power users.

Try sher the next time you need to share localhost. It might replace a more complex tool in your workflow.