Setup dnsmasq on OS X

dnsmasq macOS.md

Never touch your local /etc/hosts file in OS X again

To setup your computer to work with *.locahost domains, e.g. project.localhost, awesome.localhost and so on, without having to add to your hosts file each time.

Requirements

• Homebrew
• Mountain Lion -> Catalina

Install

brew install dnsmasq

Setup

Create config directory

mkdir -pv $(brew --prefix)/etc/

Setup *.localhost

echo 'address=/.localhost/127.0.0.1' >> $(brew --prefix)/etc/dnsmasq.conf

Change port for Catalina

echo 'port=53' >> $(brew --prefix)/etc/dnsmasq.conf

Autostart - now and after reboot

sudo brew services start dnsmasq

Add to resolvers

Create resolver directory

sudo mkdir -v /etc/resolver

Add your nameserver to resolvers

sudo bash -c 'echo "nameserver 127.0.0.1" > /etc/resolver/localhost'

Finished

That's it! You can run $ scutil --dns to show all of your current resolvers, and you should see that all requests for a domain ending in .localhost will go to the DNS server at 127.0.0.1

resolver #
  domain   : localhost
  nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1