Great News from ngrok with Static Domains

Publish Date: 2023/09/09
Update Date: 2023/09/09

Just wake up as a normal day, took up my phone, checked notifications & mails, there is a mail catch my eyes.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

Static domains and cloud edges for all ngrok users !

What a great news for us. We don’t need to remember the random URL anymore. (but as my experience, the URL doesn't change that frequently).
Not only for test or dev use, also it can be used on production as well.

So let’s dive into the static domain for free users.

Step 1: Login to the ngrok dashboard
Step 2: Navigate to Cloud Edge > Domains

Cloud Edge > Domain in Dashboard

Step 3: Just click on the button: Create Domain , then you’ll get a custom domain for yourself. As the value after --domain flag, example.ngrok-free.app for example.

Start a tunnel via CLI

Step 4: Start the ngrok agent !
- [Installation Guide]
Don’t forget create the Authtokens from Tunnels [link], please keep it safe.

# Add AUTHTOKEN into config file
$ ngrok config add-authtoken <YOUR-AUTHTOKEN>

Tunnels > Authtokens in Dashboard

Via Command Line Interface:

$ ngrok http --domain=example.ngrok-free.app 80

Via Config:

# Linux / macOS
# Path: $HOME/.config/ngrok/ngrok.yml

version: 2
authtoken: <YOUR-AUTHTOKEN>

tunnels:
  NAME-OF-TUNNEL: # Change the name to your own
    proto: http
    addr: 80
    domain: example.ngrok-free.app

# Start ngrok with config
$ ngrok start NAME-OF-TUNNEL

# Specify the config file
$ ngrok start NAME-OF-TUNNEL --config <FILE-PATH>

# Start all tunnels defined in yml
$ ngrok start --all

For more information about ngrok agent, please refer:
https://ngrok.com/docs/secure-tunnels/ngrok-agent/reference/config/

It’s quite convenience that we can observe the result via CLI output, it also shows in Tunnels > Agents with the dashboard.

Be aware of the limitation of the domain, it just goes with protocol http & tls at all, not suit for tcp , so if there is other tcp tunnel defined in config yaml file, it won’t be connect via the static URL for free users.

Hope this article can help !

Ref:
1. https://ngrok.com/blog-post/free-static-domains-ngrok-users
2. https://ngrok.com/docs/secure-tunnels/ngrok-agent/reference/config/
3. https://dashboard.ngrok.com/