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LocalDocks

Services

A service is a process you own that is holding at least one listening socket on a non-system port. That predicate is the entire definition.

Derived, not declared

LocalDocks has no list of known program names, and no table mapping ports to products. A service is an observation about the machine: something you started is listening. That is why a dev server on an unusual port is found without configuration, and why a program nobody has heard of is found too.

What a service is — development work or otherwise — is a separate question, answered by classification and never by the fact that it is listening.

The LocalDocks Services table with columns for service, endpoints, process, PID, CPU, memory and uptime, and filter chips for All, Node, Python and Databases.

Columns

ColumnMeaning
SERVICEA friendly label derived from the endpoint and the process, with the runtime beneath it.
ENDPOINTSThe primary port, plus a v4+v6 chip when the process holds both an IPv4 and an IPv6 socket on it.
PROCESSThe executable name.
PIDThe process identifier. On its own this is not an identity — see Processes.
CPUShare of the interval this process was executing, from cumulative kernel and user time deltas, divided across logical cores.
MEMORYWorking set — the column Task Manager labels “Memory”.
UPTIMETime since process creation.

Every column except ENDPOINTS sorts. The default is memory, because that is usually the column that explains a slow machine.

Dual-stack grouping

Dev servers routinely bind both IPv4 and IPv6 on the same port. Services groups sockets by the owning process, so that pair reads as one service with a v4+v6 chip rather than as two services that happen to share a number.

Filters

Four chips — All, Node, Python and Databases — plus a free-text filter matching the label, process name, framework, PID and any of the ports. The row count always reads “N of M”, so a filtered table is never mistaken for the whole set.

Actions

Clicking a row opens the detail panel, which offers three actions:

  • Open — launches the service’s localhost URL in your browser. The URL is validated against an http/https allowlist before the operating system ever sees the string, and no shell is invoked.
  • Copy URL — puts the same URL on the clipboard.
  • Terminate — opens the confirmation described in Processes.

The framework column is empty in V1

The service model carries a framework field — the “Vite · React” line a mature version would show. Project and framework detection is V2 and is not built, so the row falls back to the process name rather than inventing a label.

If a service is missing

  • It may hold no listening socket. A background worker is development work but is not a service; look in Processes.
  • It may be classified as something other than development work. Switch to System mode to check.
  • It may belong to another account. LocalDocks never elevates, so it cannot see those processes.