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With Bonjour installed in PC, I can access my server in Mac with ".local". For example, I can access my mac with the name "prosseek.local".

The problem is that in Chrome for PC, it doesn't recognize "local" to open search page instead of accessing mac server.

This issue isn't happening with other web browsers (explore/firefox) in PC. What is even wierder is that chrome seems to recognize the ".local" sometimes, but not always.

How to solve this issue? Or, how can I teach chrome that ".local" is a part of page name in order not to direct to search page?

ADDED

It seems that this problem has been a while, so I think google is not that interested in solving this issue which is a show stopper to prevent using chrome.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=30636

I found other web pages, but not so useful in solving this issue

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  • 1
    Have you tried to prefix prosseek.local with http://, so it becomes http://prosseek.local?
    – fmanco
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 2:14
  • @criziot: Yes, I did, the thing is that chrome seems to automatically remove http:// even though I prepend it.
    – prosseek
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 2:20
  • 1
    @prosseek, nowadays browsers remove the URL prefix to "save" space on the address bar, applying it to the location security notice visible before the address bar, if the website uses a certificate of some kind! It is not removed, just not presented.
    – Zuul
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 2:24
  • @prosseek: Have you checked to ensure that Windows itself can reliably resolve the host name. Such as pinging it in cmd.exe? It might not be a Chrome problem.
    – David C. Bishop
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 2:46
  • 1
    Instead of prepending https://, append a /: prosseek.local/. If that doesn’t work, then Chrome just doesn’t support .local URLs. Check if you are using the latest version, and if so, then just give it time (or file a bug-report/feature-request since it does not seem to have come up already).
    – Synetech
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 2:51

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
6

Add it to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (be sure to open as Administrator so you have access to write to that file)

127.0.0.1 prosseek.local

then run 

ipconfig /flushdns

and you should be able to

ping prosseek.local

Note: if chrome still ignores the hostname just add a trailing forward slash, e.g. prosseek.local/ which will bypass the search. Source: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=30636

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    This might solve a small problem, but does not solve the real problem. If people want to point to own host just type localhost. Microsoft uses .local domains on small company networks and people can't just edit all hosts computer files to add all the subdomains they add..
    – dresende
    Commented Jan 2, 2013 at 10:23
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    According to the question, proseek.local is the user's mac, and chrome is having this problem on Windows. Therefore 127.0.0.1 is not the right IP address. .local is a special domain that means use mDNS to resolve the IP address. It is not something you set up on a DNS or DHCP server, it works using multicast messages to ask all the computers on the LAN.
    – rjmunro
    Commented Sep 9, 2013 at 15:22
  • Thanks for the idea to add a trailing forward slash!
    – James Bond
    Commented Oct 5, 2020 at 10:18
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Call your .local domain once in Chrome prepending it with the http:// or https:// scheme (e.g.: http://mywebsite.local ).
This will avoid the Google search and instead will call your local website.

You only need to do this once. From this moment on you can enter the local URL without http:// or https:// and it will still be loaded locally (e.g.: mywebsite.local ).

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2
  • 1
    This did the trick.
    – Niloct
    Commented Sep 4, 2017 at 12:54
  • This is lame to have to do for every host on my local network from every instance of Chrome on every machine. Chrome devs, if you're watching, give us a mechanism that s*cks less, please.
    – Eliot Gillum
    Commented Mar 23, 2021 at 9:11
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Another solution is to just add a / at the end. For example, type mywebsite.local/ in the address bar and hit Enter. You don't even need to write http:// or https:// at the beginning.

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