Tailscale Setup — The 60-Second Path

~15 min · tailscale, setup, magicdns

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The fastest path from "no Tailscale" to "phone reaches my home Mac" is genuinely 60 seconds.

1. Install on each device

2. Find each device's Tailscale IP

3. Bind your service to that IP

4. Reach it from phone or other device

Open http://100.64.0.5:8000 on your phone (must have Tailscale on and signed into the same tailnet). It works on cellular. It works at a coffee shop. It works without any public IP, port forward, or domain.

The common first-day surprise

Your service binds to 100.64.0.5, but you cannot reach it from localhost on the same machine anymore (because 127.0.0.1 is no longer in the bind set). Solutions: bind to both (most servers support a comma-separated list or two listeners); or accept that you reach it via the Tailscale IP from the host too.

Code

Install on each platform·bash

# macOS
brew install --cask tailscale
open -a Tailscale  # then sign in with your identity provider

# Linux
curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh
sudo tailscale up

# iOS / Android: install the app from the store, sign in

Find each device's Tailscale IP·bash

tailscale ip -4
# e.g. 100.64.0.5

# Or list everything
tailscale status

Bind your service to the Tailscale IP·bash

# Example: Ollama
export OLLAMA_HOST=100.64.0.5
ollama serve

# Example: a Python app
uvicorn app:app --host 100.64.0.5 --port 8000

External links

Exercise

Install Tailscale on at least two devices (laptop + phone is enough). Run tailscale ip -4 on the laptop, bind one service (uvicorn, vite dev, ollama) to that IP, and load it from your phone over cellular (turn Wi-Fi off). The fact that this works on cellular without any port forward is the moment Tailscale clicks.

Progress

Progress is local-only — sign in to sync across devices.

← PreviousWhat Tailscale Actually Is (and Isn't)Next →ACLs — Restricting What Devices Can Reach What

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