Forward Coder workspace ports to your laptop for previews and local tools
At a glance
Official Coder docs show four ways to reach apps running in a workspace—Coder Desktop auto-forward, coder port-forward CLI, dashboard Open Ports, or SSH -L—so you can hit web servers, Jupyter, and APIs on localhost. This workflow is listed under sponsor, devtools, networking, dx.
- Agents / tools
- Coder, Coder CLI, Coder Desktop
Building a tool for these workflows? See weekly rates.
What they did
Start the app inside the workspace on a known port. Prefer Coder Desktop (Coder Connect) so every listening port appears as .coder:PORT with peer-to-peer when possible. Or run coder port-forward <workspace> --tcp LOCAL:REMOTE (supports comma lists and ranges). Alternatively open ports from the dashboard (needs a wildcard access URL) or use ssh -L. Optionally share a port at owner/organization/authenticated/public levels and pick HTTP vs HTTPS.
Worth knowing
Dashboard hostnames fail if any DNS label exceeds 63 characters (app + agent + workspace + username). Template max share level can cap sharable ports on licensed deployments. Desktop auto-forward is the documented simplest path for day-to-day preview.
