Hosts Editor

The Hosts view gives you a structured editor for your system hosts file (/etc/hosts on macOS and Linux, C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows). Instead of hand-editing a flat file and hoping the syntax is right, you work with a grid of entries — each one togglable, annotatable, and reversible.

Typical uses: pointing a production domain at a staging IP during QA, blocking third-party tracking domains while profiling page performance, or setting up local DNS overrides for development without touching your network resolver.

Editing entries

The entry grid displays one row per hosts-file record. Each row contains:

Column	Description
Enable / Disable	Toggle switch. Disabled entries are written back as commented lines (`#` prefix) so they survive a round-trip without being lost.
IP address	IPv4 or IPv6 address the hostnames resolve to.
Hostnames	One or more hostnames, space-separated, mapped to the IP.
Comment	Optional inline comment preserved from the original file or added by you.
Delete	Removes the entry entirely on next save.

Commented-out entries in the original file are parsed and shown in the grid with their toggle set to disabled. Enabling them removes the comment prefix; disabling a live entry adds one. Pure comment lines (notes, section headers) are preserved in place but not shown as toggleable rows.

Adding an entry

The form at the bottom of the grid accepts an IP address, one or more hostnames (space-separated), and an optional comment. The new row appears immediately in the grid but is not written to disk until you save.

Dirty state

Any unsaved change — a new entry, a toggled row, an edit to an IP or hostname — puts the editor into dirty state. Two buttons appear in the toolbar:

Save writes the current grid back to the hosts file and creates a version snapshot.
Discard reverts the grid to the last saved state.

If the hosts file is modified outside Consuela while the editor is open, use Reload from disk to pull in the external changes. The editor warns before reloading if you have unsaved edits.

Version history

Every save creates a timestamped snapshot of the hosts file. Open the history panel to see a list of previous versions, each showing its save timestamp and entry count.

From the history panel you can:

Restore a previous version, which replaces the current grid contents and marks the editor as dirty so you can review before writing to disk.
Delete individual snapshots you no longer need.

Snapshots are stored locally alongside your Consuela project data. They are independent of the hosts file itself, so restoring a snapshot does not affect the file until you explicitly save.