May not be an answer for Minikube, but I ended up here so I share what I did for Kubernetes in Docker for Mac.

I added a service like this for PostgreSQL:

kind: ServiceapiVersion: v1metadata:  name: postgres  namespace: defaultspec:  type: ExternalName  # https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/networking/#use-cases-and-workarounds  externalName: host.docker.internal  ports:    - name: port      port: 5432

My application was able to connect to the locally running postgres server with this setup using the domain name postgres. The Postgres server can listen to 127.0.0.1 with this setup.

There is a potential solution for this called Telepresence which allows to have a local workload to be proxied into the cluster as if it were actualy run within that kube cluster.

K8s Native Approach

I had similar issues with developing cloud-native software directly inside Kubernetes. We took a look at tools like Telepresence and Skaffold, too but they are hard to configure and very time-consuming.

That's why I built the DevSpace CLI together with a colleague: https://github.com/covexo/devspace

Feel free to take a look and try it out. It will solve issues like yours by allowing you to easily run all your workloads directly inside Kubernetes while still being able to program with your desktop tools (local terminal, IDE, git etc).

Alternative: Minikube networking

As you are using minikube, you should take a look as the answers to this question: Routing an internal Kubernetes IP address to the host system

Alternative: Tunneling

You could also use local tunneling with tools like ngrok: https://ngrok.com/ (simply start it locally and connect to your ngrok address from anywhere)