The latest versions of macOS come with pre-installed Apache 2.4. But it’s hard to manage it via homebrew due to Apple has removed some of the required scrips from the latest macOS releases. This tutorial will help you to remove the default installed Apache from the system and install the Homebrew version of Apache on your system.
Prerequisites
Before starting the installation of the Apache (httpd) server using this tutorial you must have the following prerequisites.
- Terminal: You must have Mac Terminal access and little knowledge about working with the terminal application. Ao login to your Mac system and open terminal
- Homebrew: Homebrew is a popular package manager for the Mac operating systems. It is useful for installing most open source software like Node. Homebrew installation tutorial
Step 1 – Installing Apache on macOS
Remove built-in Apache server (if any) from your system. Open a terminal and execute commands to stop running Apache server and remove it.
sudo apachectl stop
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
Now install the new version Apache server provided by Homebrew:
brew install httpd
After completing the installation process, configure the httpd service to be auto-started on system boot.
sudo brew services start httpd
You have successfully installed the Apache webserver via Homebrew, and configured it to auto-start with a privileged account.
You can try to reach your server in a browser by pointing it at http://localhost:8080, you should see a simple header that says “It works!”

Step 2 – Configuring the Apache Server
The Apache web server is running now on your macOS system. Now you will want to make some configuration changes according to your local development environment. A configuration file /usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf is generated by the installer which you need to edit in a text editor and make following changes.
- Set Apache Port:
The Homebrew’s version of httpd uses port 8080. You have to manually change the listen port from the default of 8080 to the standard port 80.
Find the line with Listen 8080and change it to Listen 80 - Change Document Root:
Now, configure the document root for Apache. The default document root is set to “/usr/local/var/www”. You can keep the document root unchanged and put your website files to this document root. But I assume you want to change the document root to set it to your home directory.
Change this to point to your user directory where your_user is the name of your user account:
DocumentRoot /Users/rahul/Sites
You also need to change the
tag configured just right below the DocumentRoot line. This should also be changed to point to your new document root as well:In that same
block you will find an AllowOverride option, Set this to all to enable the uses of the .htaccess file in Apache.<Directory /Users/rahul/Sites> [...] # # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files. # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords: # AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit # AllowOverride all </Directory>
- Enabling Rewrite Module:
Also, you should enable the mod_rewrite module by removing the leading
#
symbol from the following line. Search the line and update it. this will enable URL rewrite on Apache.LoadModule rewrite_module lib/httpd/modules/mod_rewrite.so
- Setup User and Group for Apache:
As you have configured the Apache document root to your home directory. You will face issues with the permissions because, by default, Apache runs as the user daemon and group daemon (Maybe username and group are to _www). For the personal systems, You can change these to match your user account (replace user_name with your real username), with a group of staff.
User user_name Group staff
Step 3 – Deploy Sample Application on Apache
Let’s create a Sites folder in your home directory and create a sample index.html file for the testing.
mkdir ~/Sites
echo "Welcome" > ~/Sites/index.html
Restart apache to ensure your configuration changes have taken effect:
sudo apachectl -k restart
Now, Point your browser to http://localhost, This should display your newly created index.html. All done.
Step 4 – Manage Apache Service
At this point, you have successfully installed the Apache server on macOS. The below-mentioned commands will help you to stop, start, and restart the Apache service at any time.
- Stop the Apache Server:
sudo apachectl stop
- Start the Apache Server:
sudo apachectl start
- Restart the Apache Server:
sudo apachectl restart
Conclusion
This tutorial helped you to install and configure the Apache webserver on the macOS system.
23 Comments
The only one that worked for me and I’ve trawled the net for two days.
But can you explain/address the comments about continuing to use apachectl after killing the native apache httpd process? Though it works I don’t understand what is linked to what now. I have brew versions [email protected] but before I ran the ‘sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist’ command the localhost kept reporting v7.8.3 in spite of linking the brew version. Can’t find any tutorials that explain the process properly.
Man you’re messing up two services. Just stick with brew, use ‘brew services start/stop/restart httpd`
Thank you! that worked perfectly to me.
Why do you say to run `sudo apachectl -k restart` after starting brew services httpd?! Those are two different services. Trying to start apachectl will try to start a separate app that you’ve already stopped and removed from plist.
You’re not supposed to run both if all you need is the brew service.
Why do you run `sudo brew services start httpd`? That changes ownership on /usr files:
“`
% sudo brew services start httpd
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Warning: Taking root:admin ownership of some httpd paths:
/usr/local/Cellar/httpd/2.4.48/bin
/usr/local/Cellar/httpd/2.4.48/bin/httpd
/usr/local/opt/httpd
/usr/local/opt/httpd/bin
/usr/local/var/homebrew/linked/httpd
This will require manual removal of these paths using `sudo rm` on
brew upgrade/reinstall/uninstall.
Warning: httpd must be run as non-root to start at user login!
==> Successfully started `httpd` (label: homebrew.mxcl.httpd)
“`
You say that running the command will “configure httpd service to be auto-started on system boot”, but brew says it’ll do the exact opposite.
“You have successfully installed Apache web server via Homebrew, and configured it to auto-start with a privileged account.”
What’s the point of starting it with a privileged account? I’m just using it for testing local repo changes. I don’t need https or anything like that.
Since I noticed the folders’ owners were changed to `root` (unlike all other folders in the directory), I stopped the service and changed ownership back to my user.
“`
% sudo chown -R sydcon /usr/local/Cellar/httpd/2.4.48/bin\
/usr/local/Cellar/httpd/2.4.48/bin/httpd\
/usr/local/opt/httpd\
/usr/local/opt/httpd/bin\
/usr/local/var/homebrew/linked/httpd\
“`
Other tutorials I’ve seen show the command without sudo. I don’t know why sudo is needed or recommended here. You don’t mention what Apache needs privileged access for.
Thanks Rahul, Its Very Helpful for me,
if ‘sudo apachectl -k restart’ command give an error, run this command : ‘sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl -k restart’
Thanks Mete, for the useful details.
thank you
Thanks a lot ! This help me so much !
I have configured apache but master process starts as user _www as well (should start as root), so that it can’t reads certificates in /etc/letsencrypt/live/ that are private for root ; is there a way to start correctly master process ? I’m running Mac OS server too and and that’s correctly configured
apache brew:
_www 68719 0,0 0,0 4488604 1808 ?? S Lun11pm 0:00.12 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 68642 0,0 0,0 4488604 1788 ?? S Lun11pm 0:00.08 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 68591 0,0 0,0 4488604 1700 ?? S Lun11pm 0:00.06 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 68042 0,0 0,0 4488604 1796 ?? S Lun11pm 0:00.10 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 67725 0,0 0,0 4488604 1792 ?? S Lun11pm 0:00.11 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 53225 0,0 0,0 4488604 1784 ?? S Dom03pm 0:00.13 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 49737 0,0 0,0 4488604 1788 ?? S Dom07am 0:00.14 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 42715 0,0 0,0 4488676 1768 ?? S Sab05pm 0:00.13 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 37396 0,0 0,0 4488676 1792 ?? S Sab04am 0:00.15 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
_www 24048 0,0 0,0 4488676 1788 ?? S Gio11pm 0:00.14 /usr/local/opt/httpd/bin/httpd -k start
Mac OS server (note process with lower pid as root):
_www 17919 0,0 0,0 4299468 1492 ?? S Gio10pm 0:00.09 /usr/sbin/httpd …
_www 17918 0,0 0,0 4299468 1488 ?? S Gio10pm 0:00.74 /usr/sbin/httpd …
_www 17915 0,0 0,0 4299468 1356 ?? S Gio10pm 0:00.30 /usr/sbin/httpd …
_www 4585 0,0 0,0 4299468 1356 ?? S 11Set19 0:00.10 /usr/sbin/httpd …
_www 4584 0,0 0,0 4299468 1356 ?? S 11Set19 0:00.09 /usr/sbin/httpd …
_www 4583 0,0 0,0 4299468 1356 ?? S 11Set19 0:00.28 /usr/sbin/httpd …
_www 4582 0,0 0,0 4299468 1516 ?? S 11Set19 0:00.51 /usr/sbin/httpd …
_www 4581 0,0 0,0 4299468 1340 ?? S 11Set19 0:00.64 /usr/sbin/httpd …
root 4555 0,0 0,0 4299492 5844 ?? Ss 11Set19 0:26.49 /usr/sbin/httpd …
Thanks bro!
How to install the mpm_itk module for latest version of Apache on Mac?
You saved my life, thx !
Thank you and good job!
awesome! It Works!
Thanks Rahul.
Rahul you are the man!!! Thank you!!!
worked perfect many thanks
Worked up until the last part. Do NOT use ‘/’ , use ‘\’. It worked for me. Also just typing in localhost worked as well. Other than that, well done
Thank you! This worked perfectly.
Very clear and it works!
Thank you Rahul
thanks very much