Platforms

aka runs on macOS, Linux and Windows 10 1803 or later, on x64 and arm64 (and 32-bit ARM Linux). CI runs the unit tests and an end-to-end test with real Node and Python servers on all six x64 and arm64 combinations, and checks the login service on each system.

macOSCopy Anchor Link

• Port detection reads listening sockets with lsof, which every macOS install has.
• Trust goes into the login keychain. macOS asks you to confirm.
• Port 443 needs sudo aka proxy start (binding loopback addresses below 1024 is privileged), otherwise URLs carry :1355.
• Login service: a launchd agent in ~/Library/LaunchAgents.

LinuxCopy Anchor Link

• Port detection reads /proc.
• Trust copies the CA into the distribution's anchor directory and rebuilds the system bundle with sudo. This is tested on Ubuntu 24.04 and 22.04, Debian, Fedora, Rocky Linux, Alpine, Arch and openSUSE. Firefox and Chrome keep their own NSS databases, which aka updates when certutil is installed (libnss3-tools or nss-tools).
• Port 443 needs sudo aka proxy start, or setcap cap_net_bind_service=+ep on the binary.
• Login service: a systemd user unit in ~/.config/systemd/user.

WindowsCopy Anchor Link

• Port detection reads the process table from a Toolhelp32 snapshot and listening sockets from GetExtendedTcpTable.
• Stopping apps: the app shares aka's console, so Ctrl+C reaches it directly, as without aka. aka also keeps each app in a job object, so a takeover, a third Ctrl+C, or aka itself exiting stops the whole process tree. aka up does the same for all of its apps.
• Trust goes into the current user's Root store. Windows asks you to confirm; no administrator rights are needed.
• Port 443 needs no privileges, so URLs have no port unless something else holds 443.
• Shell syntax in aka.toml commands runs through cmd /c, which understands &&, | and >, but uses %VAR% rather than $VAR.
• Login service: a value under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Unlike launchd and systemd, it does not restart a crashed proxy; the next app does.
• Name resolution: browsers and curl resolve *.localhost by themselves, but the Windows resolver does not. Code that calls another app (Node, Python and similar) needs a hosts-file entry such as 127.0.0.1 api.localhost.
• Output goes through pipes, not a pseudo-console, so some tools turn off colours.

Known limitsCopy Anchor Link

• kill -9 on aka up itself, on macOS or Linux, leaves its apps running. Ctrl+C, closing the terminal and a plain kill stop them.
• Ctrl+Z suspends aka but not the app.
• A dev server that serves HTTPS itself cannot be proxied; see HTTPS.
• Python requests and Java use their own CA bundles; see HTTPS.