Disable Upgrade-Insecure-Requests in Firefox and Chrome [duplicate]

Question

Does using Chrome v.63 force use of https?

I am running Apache 2.4.27 on a Windows 10 desktop as a sandbox where I can experiment and do some tutorials. I have a virtual host setup called www.tutorial.dev with an alias of tutorial.dev. In the Windows 10 hosts file I have set up www.tutorial.dev and tutorial.dev to point to localhost.

As of yesterday the url http://tutorial.dev/Bootstrap4FromScratch/ was working normally. In this case providing a directory listing as a jump off point into various examples and exercises. Today, when I type in the url Chrome changes it to https and I get a connection refused message.

I understand the connection refused message. There are no certificates setup.

The only change I can find is that Chrome changed from v.62.x to v.63.x. What in Chrome 63 could be forcing http to https?

I don't have this problem with MS Edge. I tested another similar configuration on a different machine that was in the process of downloading Chrome 63.x. It already had 62.x installed. It worked until the 63.x upgrade was complete then the same problem occurred.

Additional information: If I use http://localhost to bring up the index.html or version.php in the htdocs directory the switch from http to https does not happen. The virtual host www.tutorial.dev resides in another directory outside of htdocs.

If this has been asked and answered please point me to the question/answer thread.

Thanks in advance,

Barry

Answer 1

Google owns the .dev TLD and with Chrome 63 they are forcing HTTPS on all requests to anything.dev

I went through my local dev setup and replaced all references to .dev with .local, works fine now.

Your other option is to use Firefox for local development. .dev now triggers https in FF (since before FF61) with a workaround

Edit (asside): I have switched to using .localhost for dev as browsers allow navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition() (blocked if site is not HTTPS).