Safari redirects local sites to https after update to 10.13.2

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Level 1

7 points

Safari redirects local sites to https after update to 10.13.2

I am using MAMP to serve my local development sites. All was working fine until today, after I updated to High Sierra 10.13.2. Now all of my local sites are being redirected from (for example) http://testsite.dev to https://testsite.dev only in Safari. On Chrome my local sites still work fine.

I suspect this is related to the new Safari 11.0.2 (assuming it's a new version for 10.13.2) or it is related to my update to High Sierra 10.13.2, but I can't find any solutions. Please help.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016), macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)

Posted on Dec 7, 2017 12:21 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 8, 2017 6:11 AM in response to Donaldo

Same here, exact the same behavior. (.dev domain, since today, Chrome works, etc...). It seems not to be related to MAMP, as I have a different setup, though. As a workaround, I switched form .dev to .local, which mitigates the problem, but is annoying.

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Answer 2

Donaldo Author

Level 1

7 points

Dec 8, 2017 7:46 AM in response to StefanWie

Very strange that changing to .local gets around the issue. That makes me think that it has to be something in Safari. I'd rather not change 40 .dev domains to .local. There's gotta be a fix (other than just using Chrome).

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Answer 3

dreas295

Level 1

4 points

Dec 8, 2017 4:11 PM in response to dreas295

possibly related:

https://iyware.com/dont-use-dev-for-development/

Long and short is .dev is now a generic Top Level Domain owned in full by Google.

.local, .test, .example should all work.

There are some indications that a new browser release for Chrome will also look for a certificate and/or redirect to https.

This is clearly an evolving issue. ymmv.

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Answer 4

Dec 8, 2017 10:29 PM in response to Donaldo

I thought I was going mad! As a website developer, I can no longer load any of my local sites, except those with a valid SSL certificate.

I have the same issue in other browsers, not just Safari.

Does anybody know why this is happening?

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Answer 5

Dec 8, 2017 10:38 PM in response to Donaldo

I seem to recall this happening before, a few years ago. Suddenly after an OS X update (as it was called back then), locally-defined domains no longer resolved correctly. Eventually Apple fixed this, so that /etc/hosts is checked first, as it should be.

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