Local development environment for Mac

Short Leash is a local development environment for macOS 13 or later, free at its core, on Apple silicon and Intel. It serves every project in your folders at https://<name>.test, with no containers or config files.

What does it run?

Sites: PHP (Laravel, WordPress, Symfony and more, PHP 8.0 to 8.5, and 8.6 as a preview, per site), Python (Django, Flask, FastAPI), Node dev servers, Deno, Go modules, static sites and Procfile apps. See Sites.
Services: MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL with pgvector and PostGIS, MongoDB, Valkey, Redis, Memcached, Meilisearch, Typesense, S3-compatible storage and Laravel Reverb, several versions side by side. See Services.
Debugging: a request inspector, dump() capture, a mail catcher, logs and Xdebug. See Requests, Dumps and Mail.

How does it work on macOS?

A launchd job opens ports 80 and 443 and hands them to Short Leash, which runs as your user. No Short Leash code runs as root.
/etc/resolver/test sends .test lookups to Short Leash's DNS server. See Use .test domains.
Short Leash's certificate authority, trusted in your login keychain, can only sign .test names. See Trusted HTTPS.

How much of my Mac does it use?

Very little when idle. PHP pools and app servers start on the first request, services run only when you turn them on, and everything stays on 127.0.0.1.

How do I start?

Download Short Leash, then follow the install guide.