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Could run into the same issue there as well. The only reserved tlds are:

.localhost .example .invalid .test

The rest are up for grabs.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why .test would make the list and not .dev (or some equivalent) but it is what it is.

Linked Wikipedia article points out towards the top that RFC 6762 reserves .local for mDNS (fka Zeroconf/Bonjour) multicast DNS lookups on a local area network. (Which is why you probably don't want to use .local for non-multicast DNS lookups as you may break mDNS applications.)

Non-mobile link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local

So you use it while you know it is reserved for something else?

.local is for mDNS. You're just asking for conflicts.