Run a local static file server over HTTPS

It feels like every server-side runtime has a one-shot command to run a local web server. Node has npx http-server, Python has python -m http.server, etc. That works fine if you can serve your files over HTTP, but what if you need to use HTTPS?

Caddy is a web server written in Go. It made a name for itself by being the first (I think?) to automatically handle SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt. On macOS, you can install it via Homebrew, which adds a command you can run from anywhere.

Here’s how to use Caddy to serve static files in your current directory over HTTPS:

caddy file-server --domain localhost

Yup, that’s it. There are a few more options for the file-server subcommand if you need them, but an HTTPS static file server is a single short command with no config. How cool is that?