How to Set Up Laravel Sail on macOS for Local Development

To use Laravel Sail on macOS, follow these steps to get a development environment up and running:

Step 1: Install Docker

Since Laravel Sail uses Docker to run your application, you'll need to install Docker Desktop for macOS:

1. Go to the Docker website and download Docker Desktop for macOS.
2. Follow the installation instructions to set it up.

Step 2: Create a New Laravel Project

You can create a new Laravel project with Sail using the following commands:

1. Open a terminal and navigate to the directory where you want to create your project.

2. Run the following command to create a new Laravel project:

   curl -s "https://laravel.build/example-app" | bash
   

   Replace example-app with your desired project name.

   

3. Once the project is created, navigate into your project directory:

   cd example-app
   

Step 3: Start Laravel Sail

Laravel Sail uses Docker Compose to manage containers. You can start Sail and run your application as follows:

1. Run the following command to start Sail:

   ./vendor/bin/sail up -d
   

   This command starts the application in the background using Docker containers. By default, it sets up services like MySQL, Redis, and Mailpit...

Step 4: Interacting with Sail

You can now use Sail to run common Laravel commands. For example:

• To run migrations:

  ./vendor/bin/sail artisan migrate
  

• To run tests:

  ./vendor/bin/sail test
  

Step 5: Access the Application

Once Sail is running, open your browser and go to:

http://localhost

Your Laravel application should be accessible from there.

Optional: Use sail Alias

To make interacting with Sail easier, you can add an alias to your terminal configuration. Run this command to define the alias:

alias sail='[ -f sail ] && bash sail || bash vendor/bin/sail'

Now you can run commands using sail instead of ./vendor/bin/sail, like this:

sail up -d
sail artisan migrate

That's how you set up and use Laravel Sail on macOS!

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