porthole-helper

Native messaging helper for PortHole, the Chrome extension that shows every dev server running on your machine — grouped by project — and lets you open, start, restart, or kill them.

A browser extension can't see which local ports are listening; this small zero-dependency companion does the scanning (via lsof and docker ps) and is invoked by Chrome on demand through native messaging. Nothing runs in the background, and nothing ever leaves your machine.

Install

1. Install the PortHole extension from the Chrome Web Store.

2. Open the popup — it shows the exact command to run, including your extension ID:

   npx porthole-helper install <extension-id>

3. Click RESCAN in the popup. Done.

The installer copies the host to ~/.porthole/ and registers it with every Chrome-family browser on your machine (Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge).

macOS and Linux, Node.js ≥ 18. Windows is not supported yet.

Optional: project registry

Create ~/.porthole/projects.json (an example is placed next to it at install time) to unlock START / RESTART / STOP buttons and pinned ports per project:

{
  "my-app": {
    "dir": "/Users/you/Projects/my-app",
    "start": "npm run dev -- --port $PORT",
    "port": 5173,
    "supabase": true
  }
}

Other commands

npx porthole-helper status      # what's registered, where
npx porthole-helper uninstall   # remove the browser registrations

MIT · source: https://github.com/LucDesvaux/porthole