As part of the v0.4 Portal sprint, we’re focusing on allowing users to login to apps with their Blockstack IDs.
To enable this operating system wide on macOS, I updated our Mac app to register itself as a handler for the blockstack:// protocol.
Additionally, I added a “Portal Development Mode” which instructs the app to direct blockstack:// requests to your development copy of the portal running on port 3000 instead of the app’s bundled portal on 8888.
Holding down Option and clicking the Blockstack icon presents you with the option to enable “Portal Development Mode” and also gives you information about which the ports the app’s various processes are running on.
This also makes it easier to get started on local development of the Portal. You no longer need to manually install your own Blockstack Core node and start the API. You can simply download the Blockstack Mac app, enable development node and your the copy of the Portal you’re hacking on will by default use the bundled Blockstack Core node.
Here’s a sneak peak:
We’ll have a fresh build including these features for you next week!