The MAMP Viewer app is unnecessary to load your custom Pro hosts on iOS

MAMP GmbH, the developer of MAMP, has an iOS app named MAMP Viewer. First impression is that it is necessary if you want to dev your Pro hosts on iOS devices. The developers released a tutorial video of how, after downloading MAMP Viewer on your device, to just tick “Show in MAMP Viewer” in the General tab of the MAMP Pro window, and then load the custom host on your device.

iOS App Store and WebKit issues

The MAMP Viewer app has plenty of poor reviews on the iOS App Store. The reviews explain many users’ issues with the app, and I’ve experienced a lot of those same situations too.

Part of the problem is that since the app has not been updated in over a year, it does not utilize the latest iOS WebKit rendering engine. This means many of the latest CSS capabilities that are useable in Safari are missing in the MAMP Viewer app. This first came to my attention when I wanted to play around with safe-padding-inset and viewport-fit=cover.

Turns out you don’t need it

We are in luck though, because MAMP Viewer is totally unnecessary to dev your custom hosts on your iOS device, so long as it ends in .local. The step of activating the correct “Show In” box is still required, but just restart the servers, and now you can pull up your custom .local host right in iOS Safari.

I confirmed this by attempting to load a custom host in Safari on my iPhone XR before installing MAMP Viewer, and it pulled up just fine. Then I installed the Viewer app, and it made no difference. After this I completely removed the Viewer app — it loaded all the same. It offers no additional benefits. I’m not sure why the app is still available for download, because it does not seem the be necessary at all for .local hosts.

For Android

I don’t have an Android device to confirm this works on that platform as well, but if anyone can confirm, send me a note and I’ll update the post with your credit.

Thanks for reading!

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I’m a web developer by trade and Mac enthusiast at heart. If you ever need help with either of those things you can always reach me at nico@studioncreations.com.