// the find
kirillplatonov/hotwire-livereload
Live reload gem for Hotwire Rails apps.
A Rails gem that triggers Turbo page reloads when app files change during development. It hooks into ActionCable (or optionally reuses an existing TurboStream connection) to push reload signals to the browser. Useful for Rails devs who want instant feedback without manual refreshes.
Auto-detection of jsbundling and cssbundling output folders is a nice touch — works out of the box for the most common Rails 7+ setups. The debounce delay option for Tailwind is practical; without it you'd get double-reloads on every template save. The toggle-without-restart mechanism (tmp file) is a simple but genuinely useful escape hatch. Two reload methods (ActionCable channel or TurboStream) gives flexibility for apps that already have one or the other configured.
553 stars and only 27 forks after a few years suggests limited adoption — the Rails community largely moved on to using Vite + vite-plugin-full-reload or similar, making this somewhat redundant in modern setups. No test suite visible in the directory tree; for something that hooks into the request cycle via middleware, that's a gap. The scroll position preservation is JavaScript-level only, so any server-driven re-render that changes the DOM before the reload fires can still jump you. The `data-turbo-track` workaround requirement (removing it in development) is a footgun — easy to forget and then wonder why cache-busting stops working in staging.