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Applications

Herd uses the concept of parked paths and linked directories for serving applications. You can access every application in a parked path via <directory-name>.test. By default, Herd parks the ~/Herd directory for you. Any PHP application in this directory is available via its .test domain automatically. If you have other locations for your projects, you can add them as parked paths in the general settings or link individual projects as a linked directory.
General Settings
Aside from Laravel, Herd supports many frameworks and applications out-of-the-box. If your framework is not in the list, you can create a custom driver to run it with Herd.

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Creating your first application

The fastest way to manage your applications and to create new ones is the command line.
These commands go into your Herd directory, create a brand new Laravel application and open it in your browser. The herd edit command even opens your favorite IDE.

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Linking an existing application

You can link an existing application with a specific domain via the link command from any directory on your machine. The link command uses the directory name as domain name if you don’t set additional parameters.
These commands create Herd configurations, and you can now access the application via your-project.test and custom-domain.test. This is useful if you want to use an application from multiple domains, for example in multi-tenancy environments or if you don’t store all your projects in a single code directory.

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Via the GUI

If you prefer creating and linking applications via a graphical user interface, you can use the new application window of Herd. Select “New Application” from the Herd menu bar icon or press ⌘N in the Applications window. You can describe your application in a prompt and let a coding agent build it for you. If you leave the prompt empty, Herd creates a fresh Laravel application with the selected starter kit.
New application window
Click “Advanced” to configure all options of the Laravel installer, like the starter kit, authentication, testing framework and the database. Herd Pro users can install MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL right from this form if the database isn’t installed yet.
Advanced options of the new application window
Click “Link Existing App” to add an existing project from any directory on your machine to Herd.

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Unlinking an existing application

You may remove a previously created link, by using the unlink command from any directory on your machine. The unlink command uses the directory name as domain name if you don’t set additional parameters.
These commands remove any previously created links to your application.

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Integrations

Herd allows linking your local applications with first-party Laravel cloud services and makes triggering common tasks like deployments super easy. Herd supports deploying applications to Laravel Cloud and connecting them to sites on Laravel Forge with the Forge integration.