Laravel Herd is a local development environment for macOS and Windows that runs PHP and nginx natively, with no Docker and no virtual machine. You put a project in a folder, and it is available at project-name.test a moment later. This guide covers what you get, how to set up a site, how to switch PHP versions per project, how to turn on HTTPS, and where databases fit, using the commands from Herd's own documentation.

What Herd is, and where it runs

Herd bundles PHP, nginx, a local DNS service (so .test domains resolve) and Node. It is available for macOS and Windows. Linux is not supported: the Herd website says the team is working on a Linux version but it is not ready to ship, so on Linux, Laravel Sail or a manual setup is still the route.…