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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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prosseek
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    Have you tried to prefix `prosseek.local` with `http://`, so it becomes `http://prosseek.local`? – fmanco Jun 23 '12 at 02:14
  • @criziot: Yes, I did, the thing is that chrome seems to automatically remove http:// even though I prepend it. – prosseek Jun 23 '12 at 02:20
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    @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 Jun 23 '12 at 02:24
  • @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 Jun 23 '12 at 02:46
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    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](http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list) since it does not seem to have come up already). – Synetech Jun 23 '12 at 02:51
  • @David C. Bishop: It works fine with cmd.exe, and it also works fine with other web browsers. – prosseek Jun 23 '12 at 03:00
  • How about adding the relevant IP address for `prosseek.local` to your Windows `hosts` file (`C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts`)? Not terribly scalable, but it could serve the needs of development work. – Lars Rohrbach Jun 23 '12 at 04:10

3 Answers3

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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 ).

Jpsy
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    This did the trick. – Niloct Sep 04 '17 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 Mar 23 '21 at 09:11
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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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andy magoon
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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 Jan 02 '13 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 Sep 09 '13 at 15:22
  • Thanks for the idea to add a trailing forward slash! – James Bond Oct 05 '20 at 10:18
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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.

Jalal
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