I use .local all the time and it works just fine. For TLS I use my existing personal CA, but HTTP links don't cause issues for me. That said, I do use mDNS/Bon

I use .local all the time and it works just fine. For TLS I use my existing personal CA, but HTTP links don't cause issues for me. That said, I do use mDNS/Bonjour to resolve .local addresses (which is probably what breaks .local if you're using it as a placeholder for a real domain). Using .local as a imaginary LAN domain is a terrible idea. These days, .internal is reserved for that.