nowfound

Life & fun · January 7, 2019

Mkcert – Valid HTTPS certificates for localhost

Mkcert – Valid HTTPS certificates for localhost launched on January 7, 2019 with 839 votes, #2 of 2,587 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 7 years on.

Visit blog.filippo.io ↗Alternativestop 1% of January 2019

In plain words

Mkcert is a tool that generates valid HTTPS certificates for local development. It creates locally-trusted certificates that work on localhost without browser warnings, eliminating the need for self-signed certificate workarounds. The tool is designed for developers who need to test HTTPS functionality during local development. It simplifies the certificate setup process by automating certificate generation and installation on the developer's machine.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

The web is moving to HTTPS, preventing network attackers from observing or injecting page contents. But HTTPS needs TLS certificates, and while deployment is increasingly a solved issue thanks to the ACME protocol and Let’s Encrypt, development still mostly ends up happening over HTTP because no one can get an universally valid certificate for localhost . This is a problem because more and more browser features are being made available only to secure origins, and testing with HTTP hides any mixed content issues that can break a production HTTPS website. Developing with HTTPS should be as easy as deploying with HTTPS. mkcert is a simple by design tool that hides all the arcane…from blog.filippo.io

Does a similar job

all alternatives →

More life & fun this month

the category →

Source: Show HN post ↗

Launched alongside, January 2019

the whole month →