Custom name server removes the ability of visiting websites with 'dev' in the url

I am a web developer and in my younger years I tried setting up a custom name server on my mac without really knowing what I was doing. I wanted to be able to visit my own website on adreses like 'sam.dev'.

I know that I succeeded at some point and threw the program, that helped me set it up, from my macbook because it was just a trial version.

Now, a couple of years later I notice that I cannot go to any website that has .dev or dev. in the url.

This means I cannot visit websites like nodejs.dev or web.dev

I have tried resetting my DNS but I can't get it to work again. How would I go about resetting this and what did I do wrong?

more info:

scutil --dns significant return values:

resolver #8
  domain   : test
  nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
  port     : 20560
  flags    : Request A records, Request AAAA records
  reach    : 0x00030002 (Reachable,Local Address,Directly Reachable Address)

resolver #9
  domain   : dev
  nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
  port     : 20560
  flags    : Request A records, Request AAAA records
  reach    : 0x00030002 (Reachable,Local Address,Directly Reachable Address)

contents of etc/hosts

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1   localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
# BEGIN section for OpenVPN Client SSL sites
127.94.0.1  client.openvpn.net
# END section for OpenVPN Client SSL sites

I fixed my problem for .dev domains like web.dev but I still have the problem for sites like dev.to

Solution 1:

I have been passively looking for this for over a year now. thanks to @nohillside I found that the .dev redirect were resolvers and looked into my /etc/ and found a folder called resolver.

(get to /etc/resolver/ on mac using CMD-SHIFT-G in finder)

This folder contained the file named dev with the contents:

# Lovingly generated by Pow
nameserver 127.0.0.1
port 20560

from the pow website:

And Pow eliminates the need to edit /etc/hosts.

I am now wondering if I used some other application that used Pow internally and didn't clean up after itself.