Laravel Herd

Laravel

development

perfected

One click PHP development environment.

Zero dependencies. Zero headaches.

Tue 9:54 PM

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Herd is a blazing fast, native Laravel and PHP development environment for macOS. It includes everything you need to get started with Laravel development, including PHP and nginx. Once you install Herd, you're ready to start developing with Laravel.

Features

The fastest environment around

Herd uses static binaries for PHP, nginx, and dnsmasq, making it faster than other PHP development environments.

Using Herd, you can immediately enjoy 35% faster tests and 100% faster web requests.

Seamless migration from Valet

Using Laravel Valet? Herd automatically migrates your existing Valet preferences so that you can keep working without interruption.

You can manage Herd's configuration via its intuitive UI, including your installed PHP versions and SSL certificates.

Easily manage multiple versions of PHP

Herd comes with PHP 7.4 - 8.3, and you can switch between any of these versions in seconds. Herd even lets you pin sites to specific PHP versions.

Herd will automatically keep all of your PHP installations up to date. Testing the features of the latest PHP versions has never been easier.

Everything you need to get started

Herd includes binaries for Composer, the Laravel installer, and Expose, making them available to your CLI automatically.

Keep managing your sites and services directly from your terminal, just like Laravel Valet.

Commonly
asked
questions

Herd is a native macOS application written in Swift and will not work on Windows or Linux. There are currently no plans to support other operating systems.

No – Herd uses static binaries for PHP, nginx, and dnsmasq and does not rely on Homebrew or any other package managers.

If you are using PHP extensions that are not included in Herd, you should consider continuing to use Laravel Valet.

In most other scenarios, you will benefit from the convenient UI and familiar workflow offered by Laravel Herd.

Herd ships with the option to install PHP 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3. Herd's automatic updater regularly checks for new versions and allows you to update to the latest version via the Herd UI.

Herd includes the following extensions:
bcmath, bz2, calendar, ctype, curl, dba, dom, exif, ffi, fileinfo, filter, ftp, gd, gmp, iconv, imagick, intl, mbstring, mysqli, opcache, openssl, pcntl, pdo, pdo_mysql, pdo_pgsql, pdo_sqlite, pgsql, phar, posix, readline, redis, session, shmop, simplexml, soap, sockets, sodium, sqlite3, sysvmsg, sysvsem, sysvshm, tokenizer, xml, xmlreader, xmlwriter, zip and zlib.

Xdebug can be installed manually via PECL and Homebrew.

Yes, you can manually compile and install additional PHP extensions by compiling them manually via PECL and Homebrew.

Perfect matches for Herd

Tinkerwell

Tinkerwell is the missing graphical UI for interacting with your Laravel app. It provides a powerful code editor allowing you to run and debug code snippets within the context of your local and remote Laravel apps.

Tinkerwell is "php artisan tinker" on steroids.

Get Tinkerwell

HELO

Testing emails doesn't have to be hard. HELO is a desktop app that provides a local SMTP server, catching local emails during development so that you can inspect them.

It works perfectly with Herd and is the easiest way to test emails during development.

Get HELO

DBngin

DBngin is a database management tool for your local development environment. It lets you setup MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Redis databases with a single click.

It's as easy to use as Herd and comes with a clean and slick UI.

Get DBngin