# Everyday sharing

Discover local servers, inspect health and logs, and manage the sharing lifecycle.

## Local server discovery

**Ready to Share** shows web servers detected on this Mac, with their names, ports, and uptime. Click a localhost entry to open that service directly in your browser. Click **Share** to publish it, or use the adjacent provider menu to select a different provider.

The list refreshes every few seconds while visible and about once a minute in the background. Servers that stop responding disappear, and detected downtime resets uptime. Detection is sampled, so a stop/restart entirely between scans may not be observed.

## Main window

Select a share to see **Overview**, **Logs**, and, where supported, **Requests** or **Feedback**. The connection path separates the local server, connector, provider, and public endpoint so you can see which stage needs attention. A green provider status alone does not mean your local app is responding.

Missing metrics show a dash rather than a made-up zero. Connector logs are not the same as your app’s console; use the local server’s terminal for application errors.

![OpenTraffic’s connection path and health checks in the main window](/docs/images/health.png)

## Sharing controls

- **Share button default.** Settings → General → *Share button uses* picks what a plain click on **Share** does: a temporary Cloudflare URL, a private tailnet share, or ngrok. The ▾ menu lets you choose another provider, including OpenTunnel.
- **Auto-stop.** *Stop shares after* (15 min, 1 h, 4 h, or never) applies to new shares; **Stop After** in a tunnel's ⋯ menu changes a running one. A countdown shows in the header and on Live cards, and a notification says when time ran out.
- **Host header fix.** When Vite, Next.js, Django, or Rails reject the public hostname, the Public site check says so and offers **Fix Host Header**, which makes the tunnel send the local host (e.g. `localhost:5173`): `--http-host-header` for Quick Tunnels, an `add-headers` policy for ngrok, and `originRequest.httpHostHeader` on the Cloudflare route for custom domains. **Config Snippet…** shows the framework setting instead; Tailscale shares can only use the snippet.
- **Saved paths and sharing.** **Paths** copies the public URL plus a saved path such as `/api/webhooks/stripe`; **Share…** opens the macOS share sheet.
- **Notification actions.** "Is live" notifications have **Copy URL** and **Stop**; failures have **Show Details**.

## Lifecycle and ownership

**Stop** keeps a share’s saved settings. **Remove** deletes the local entry. Quitting stops app-owned connectors and routes, while externally started connectors remain untouched. After a crash, OpenTraffic checks and cleans up connectors and routes it owns on the next launch.

For provider-specific details, see [Cloudflare](/docs/cloudflare-quick), [OpenTunnel](/docs/opentunnel), and [Tailscale](/docs/tailscale).