Make .local domains NOT slow in macOS

Problem

I used to have a bunch of domains in /etc/hosts like peterbecom.dev for testing Nginx configurations locally. But then it became impossible to test local sites in Chrome because an .dev is force redirected to HTTPS. No problem, so I use .local instead. However, DNS resolution was horribly slow. For example:

▶ time curl -I http://peterbecom.local/about/minimal.css > /dev/null
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0  1763    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:--  0:00:05 --:--:--     0
curl -I http://peterbecom.local/about/minimal.css > /dev/null  0.01s user 0.01s system 0% cpu 5.585 total

5.6 seconds to open a local file in Nginx.

Solution

Here's that one weird trick to solve it: Add an entry for IPv4 AND IPv6 in /etc/hosts.

So now I have:

▶ cat /etc/hosts | grep peterbecom
127.0.0.1       peterbecom.local
::1             peterbecom.local

Verification

Ah! Much better. Thing are fast again:

▶ time curl -I http://peterbecom.local/about/minimal.css > /dev/null
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0  1763    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
curl -I http://peterbecom.local/about/minimal.css > /dev/null  0.01s user 0.01s system 37% cpu 0.041 total

0.04 seconds instead of 5.6.