PHP stands for HyperText Preprocessor and is a server-side programming language. Originally it was developed for web development but now is also used as a general-purpose language. It was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994.
The PHP versions for macOS is maintained in third party repository that can be add to system with brew tap. It also allows you to install and use multiple PHP versions on a single macOS system.
This tutorial will help you to install PHP on macOS.
Prerequisites
Before starting the installation of PHP 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. Now login to your Mac system and open a terminal
- Homebrew: Homebrew is a popular package manager for the Mac operating systems. It is useful for installing most open-source software like Node. You can install Homebrew with the following command.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
.
How to Install PHP on macOS
The latest version of macOS Sierra ships with PHP 5.6 and OSX 10.11 El Capitan with PHP 5.5, and OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion ships with PHP version 5.3. The latest version of PHP 8.2 is available to install. The steps below help you install PHP 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, 8.0, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2, 7.1, or 5.6 on the macOS system.
- First, we need to add the shivammathur/php tap to homebrew.
brew tap shivammathur/php
- Installing PHP: Use the below command to install PHP 8.3 on a macOS system. To install a different PHP version just replace
8.3
with required version.brew install shivammathur/php/[email protected]
- Configure PHP 8.3 as default:
brew link --overwrite --force shivammathur/php/[email protected]
- Once the installation is finished, restart the shell and check the active PHP version.
php -v
#Output PHP 8.3.0 (cli) (built: Aug 16 2023 19:49:00) (NTS) Copyright (c) The PHP Group Zend Engine v4.2.9, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies with Zend OPcache v8.2.9, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies
Configure PHP with Apache
After installing PHP, if you are using Apache as your web server, you need to edit the Apache configuration file to integrate PHP. Use a text editor to edit /usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf
nano /usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf
Add the following snippet to the file:
LoadModule php_module /usr/local/opt/php/lib/httpd/modules/libphp.so
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
Save the file and close it.
Now restart the Apache service to apply changes:
apachectl restart
Now create a phpinfo() function file and access in the browser.
Upgrade PHP version
You can upgrade your PHP version to the latest patch release using the brew upgrade command.
For example, to upgrade PHP 8.3:
brew upgrade shivammathur/php/[email protected]
Switch Active PHP Version
If you have installed multiple PHP versions on your system, you can switch to a new version anytime.
For example, to switch to PHP 7.4:
brew link --overwrite --force shivammathur/php/[email protected]
Make sure you already have installed the PHP 7.4 version on your system.
Conclusion
This comprehensive guide should help you successfully install and configure PHP on macOS using Shivam Mathur’s Homebrew repository. Remember to replace the version numbers in the commands with the specific version of PHP you wish to install.
13 Comments
this article’s helpful, but it still complicates to maintain brew packages. servbay (servbay.dev) will be simply.
And how to install php 8 without homebrew?
how do i delete it?
I have installed php as detailed above for a Mac.
The commmand php is working but the php info page is not
I followed the download link for 7.3 and it installed 7.3.8, no problems
I dunno if its me but mine auto reverts back to PHP7.1 despite I have installed 7.3. Anyone got an idea why or if they’re having the same issue
Same here
Same here.
Thanks. Absolutely helpful.
very helpful, thank you so much
Very good work ! you saved me 🙂 i was looking for how to update my mac from 7.1 to 7.2 , since 3 days , by chance i found your post i solved my problem thanks your tuto in 2 secondes ! , i thank you 🙂
How did you get PHP to default to 7.2 on your MAC? I just installed php 7.3 but PHP -version shows version 7.1 still. I can’t find how to make it default to version 7.3 – if you know please tell me because this blog entry doesn’t have the answer. – Thanks!
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