What’s running on port 1420 on my Mac?

The error

error when starting dev server:
Error: Port 1420 is already in use

Vite refuses to pick another port because the template sets strictPort: true. Something is still on 1420.

Find it

lsof -nP -iTCP:1420 -sTCP:LISTEN
ps -o pid,ppid,etime,command -p <PID>

You’ll usually see node …/vite from an earlier tauri dev (or npm run tauri dev) that outlived its window. The parent PID tells you if its terminal is still around; 1 means it’s an orphan. Stop it:

kill <PID>

With Stat Space: statspace port 1420, then statspace kill 1420.

Change the port

Tauri needs to know where the frontend is, so change both files to the same number.

In vite.config.ts:

server: {
  port: 1430,
  strictPort: true,
}

In src-tauri/tauri.conf.json (Tauri 2):

"build": {
  "devUrl": "http://localhost:1430"
}

Tauri 1 calls the same setting build.devPath. If you only change Vite, the window opens blank or shows a connection error, because it’s still loading 1420.

Exposure

The template binds Vite to localhost unless TAURI_DEV_HOST is set. That variable is set by tauri android dev and tauri ios dev so a phone can reach your Mac, and then Vite listens on your LAN address. That’s expected during mobile work, but don’t leave it running on shared Wi-Fi. More in dev server exposed to the network.

Seeing it live

Stat Space shows 1420 as a Vite server with its project folder and who started it, so a stray one from yesterday’s session stands out. Leftovers whose parent is launchd are also flagged as orphans you can clear in one go.