Accessing localhost of PC from USB connected Android mobile device

I've read numerous forums and tried play apps but not found a solution until now.

My scenario I believe is similar to yours, but I will clarify to help others. I have a locally hosted website and web services to be used by my android application. I need to have this working on the road for demonstration with only my laptop and no network connection.

Note: Using my iPhone as a wifi hotspot and connecting both my pc and my android device worked, but the iPhone 4S connection is slow and dropped out regularly.

My solution is as follows:

  • Unplug network cables on PC and turn off wifi.
  • Turn off wifi on android device
  • Connect android to pc via USB
  • Turn on "USB Tethering" in the android menu. (Under networks->more...->Tethering and portable hotspot")
  • Get the IP of your computer that has been assigned by the USB tether cable. (open command prompt and type "ipconfig" then look for the IP that the USB network adapter has assigned)
  • Open a browser on the PC using the IP address found instead of localhost to test. i.e. http://192.168.1.1/myWebSite
  • Open a browser on the android and test it works

Google posted a solution for this kind of problem here.

The steps:

  • Connect your Android device and your development machine with USB debugging enabled
  • Open Chrome in your development machine, open new tab, right click in the new browser tab, click inspect
  • Click the three dots icon on right top side three dots, -> More Tools, Remote Devices.
  • Look at bottom of the screen, make sure your device name is appeared on the list with Green colored dot.
  • Look below at the settings part, check the Port forwarding mark
  • Add rule. Example, if your python web server is running on your machine localhost:5000 and you want to access it from your device port 3333, you type 3333 on the left part, and type localhost:5000, and click add rule.
  • Voila, now you can access your web server from your device. Try open new browser tab, and visit http://localhost:3333 from your device

I finally solved this problem. I used Samsung Galaxy S with Froyo. The "port" below is the same port what you use for the emulator (10.0.2.2:port). What I did:

  1. first connect your real device with the USB cable (make sure you can upload the app on your device)
  2. get the IP address from the device you connect, which starts with 192.168.x.x:port
  3. open the "Network and Sharing Center"
  4. click on the "Local Area Connection" from the device and choose "Details"
  5. copy the "IPv4 address" to your app and replace it like: http://192.168.x.x:port/test.php
  6. upload your app (again) to your real device
  7. go to properties and turn "USB tethering" on
  8. run your application on the device

It should now work.

Tags:

Android

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