Chrome Private Network Access (PNA) Blocking SPFx Localhost Development

With the recent Chrome PNA changes (Chrome 141+), SharePoint Framework (SPFx) developers are unable to access local network services when developing against the SharePoint Hosted Workbench. Specifically:

• When loading manifest.js or other assets from https://localhost, Chrome treats localhost as a “Public” site.
• Any requests from the workbench to local or intranet services are blocked by the new Private Network Access restrictions.

Workarounds:

• Manually allow local network access per site:
  ** Navigate to chrome://settings/content/siteDetails?site=https://localhost
  ** Set Local Network Access to Allow
  Repeat the above step for each internal web service or endpoint.

Impact:

• This breaks SPFx local development for solutions that rely on internal APIs or services.
• Workarounds are tedious and not scalable for dev teams.
• SPFx debugging is effectively blocked in Chrome unless every internal endpoint is manually whitelisted.

Request:

• Guidance from the SPFx team on officially supporting local development under the new Chrome PNA model.

Notes:

The issue does not occur in Edge or Firefox, which still allow localhost to access internal network resources by default.
Current Chrome “Allow” setting only works per origin, so local network APIs remain blocked until explicitly allowed.