Polypane and local servers

Polypane works really well with automatic reloading tools like Browsersync or hot module reloading and can be easily started from code editors like Atom, Whisk and VS Code.

For more advanced integrations, check out Integrations

Launch Polypane from your server

If your local dev server automatically opens the URL it serves, you can configure your device to always open localhost in Polypane. If you can configure a specific browser instead, you can use Polypane in stead of other browsers too. Polypane will automatically open a new tab when active, or launch with a new tab containing your URL.

Browsersync

Though Polypane works with browsersync, we recommend turning it off and replacing it with the native functionality in Polypane. Read our migrating from Browsersync to Polypane docs to help migrate.

When Polypane detects Browsersync with ghostMode turned on, we automatically disable scroll syncing. We do this because Browsersync is slightly slower than Polypane's scroll syncing, and so it continuously undoes the scroll syncing Polypane did, leading to a very frustrating experience.

To launch Polypane when you start Browsersync, add --browser 'polypane' to your CLI command. (Depending on your operating system you might need to provide the full path). Polypane will automatically start with the right URL when you launch Browsersync.

This also works with opn, webpack-dev-server and similar tools.

WPEngine’s Local Development Tool

Local WordPress sites that are created using WPEngine’s “Local” development tool use self signed certificates for https that cannot be trusted by Chromium based browsers like Polypane. This prevents urls fetched from the local Wordpress API such as post thumbnails to render when trying to load them.

To fix the issue, you must set the certificate’s trust on your local system to trusted. There is a button within the Locals tool next to SSL to "Trust" on your local system. If you’re using Mac, there are extra steps to take that are documented here.

After trusting the self signed cert on your machine, Polypane will be able to display images from URLs fetched from your Local WordPress instance. This is useful if you’re using WordPress in a headless manner.