I recently released a very small utility called sphinx-serve which helps me preview sphinx documentation locally. It spawns a simple http server on the documentation folder (html or singlehtml).

Installation is very simple, in the same virtual environment with your sphinx documentation issue pip install sphinx-serve. This will make the sphinx-serve command available.

When you issue the above command the scipt tries to detect the build folder of the documentation. It searches the current working directory plus it navigates backwards in case you are in a deeper level (much like the bundler utility). When it finds the build folder (the folder name is configurable through the --build argument) it spawns a simple http server. It serves files from the http folder (default) or from the singlehtml folder if --single is supplied.

It is handy to add the sphinx-serve command with any required arguments to the sphinx Makefile:

preview:
    sphinx-serve --single --port 4000

now you can easily preview your documentation by issuing make preview.