I wanted to run a local copy of MEW because why rely on their servers being operational when I can run it myself. It was extremely simple to set up and I had a local copy of MEW in my browser in a few minutes. An issue quickly became apparent when I went to test that MEW was functional and couldn’t actually use my hardware wallet.

After some quick googling it quickly became clear that to use a hardware wallet it had to be over a secure connection. So began my attempts to figure out how to run a site with ‘https’ locally on my Mac. I found a few different write ups on how to do this with MEW on Windows but couldn’t find any for Macs. Once I figured it out, I thought I might as well write it down f̵o̵r̵ ̵w̵h̵e̵n̵ ̵I̵ ̵f̵o̵r̵g̵e̵t̵ to help others.

These steps do assume a basic level at competency with moving through one’s file directory on the command line. This tutorial assumes you have Node.js and npm installed. If needed, a tutorial for installing these can be found here.

This won’t be the cleanest way to do this. You will have to ignore a warning on your browser every time you are opening MEW but if you are looking for a time-efficient method, this should only take you a few minutes.

1. Download MEW

You will need the most recent version of MEW which you can find here.

Download the most recent version of MEW and unzip the file. Then place the unzipped file wherever you want. I placed mine on the Desktop.

2. Installing needed packages

Next you will want to add a package to the project you just downloaded so cd into the now unzipped file.

Then run the command ‘npm install -g local-web-server’ from within it.

This will set up the package which we need.

3. Run ws --https

Next from the project directory run the command ‘ws --https’. This will start a server and will use https when accessed.

This command will output several locations on which you can access the site.

4. Access site

Open up any browser you want and put one of the links given to you from the last command into the browser. This will lead to a warning page mentioning a certificate error.

Click on ‘ADVANCED’ — this will present an option to proceed to the site.

5. Huzzah!

The site opens up and you can now use a local copy of MEW with your hardware wallet. Just remember you have to do steps 3 and 4 each time you open up MEW.

Hope this tutorial was helpful :)