While testing my college project today, I had to edit the Windows Hosts file to assign the localhost to an alias URL. Well it’s a complicated stuff. However, while editing the hosts file, I wondered about the list of productive uses I can use the file for and today I am going to share some cool tricks that worked out after some experimentation.
If you don’t know how you can edit Windows host file, have a look at this YouTube video. The process is very simple however you must be logged in through one of the administrator’s accounts.
Shorten the URLs (Give them an Alias)
Considering that you visit Lost in Technology a lot more frequently than other websites. There’s a huge possibility that you don’t like to type in the full URL each time you wish to read some articles. Of course the modern day browsers provide features such as auto-complete but even that requires you to type in at least two or more letters. But using the host file, you can open Lost in Technology (or any other websites that you prefer) by simply typing a letter and pressing the Enter button.
Suppose you want to open Lost in Technology by typing the letter ‘L’ in the URL bar, open the hosts file and add Lost in Technology IP address followed by the letter L. You can also add another line  www.L for the same IP, just in case. After saving the file, open your default browser, type in g in the URL bar and press enter. Trust me, Lost in Technology homepage will open up.
Note: Chrome users who use Google Instant Search on Omnibar will have to press the buttons Ctrl+Enter instead of pressing the usual Enter key.
Redirect Website
Blocking unnecessary websites using the hosts file is something most of us do, but what I believe is, instead of blocking the website, we must redirect them to something more useful. This practice will make things clear about who’s under control and the best thing is, it can be done for all the browsers that are installed on your computer using only the Windows Hosts file.
Generally while blocking the website, we redirected it to localhost i.e. 127.0.0.1. But to redirect it to another website, change the localhost URL to the IP of the website you want to redirect to. Simple yet effective solution.
Assign Names to your Wi-Fi Router (or Local Project You are Working On)
The very reason behind composing the post is this point. I had to test a web project running on localhost as to how it would perform in real time and for that I needed to assign it a URL.
In general scenario, you can use the same concept to assign a name to your Wi-Fi router and simply use the name in the URL bar instead of the IP 192.168.0.1 that’s used all the time. The drill is the same, add the localhost IP followed by the website (alias) name you want to give and save the hosts file.
So these were some of the out of box stuffs you can use your Windows Hosts file for. If you have any additional tips you would like to add, do mention them in the comments. More the tricks, the better it is.
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