Note If this software has been useful to you, I ask that you please star the repository, that way I know that the software is being used. Also, please consider sponsoring to support the project, as this is something I make in my free time. Thank you! ⭐️

PHP Monitor (or phpmon) is a lightweight macOS utility app that runs on your Mac and displays the active PHP version in your status bar. It's tightly integrated with Laravel Valet, so you need to have it set up if you want to use all of the functionality of the app (consult the FAQ below with info about how to set up your environment).

Screenshot: Showing the key functionality of PHP Monitor.

It's super convenient to switch between different versions of PHP. You'll even get notifications (only if you choose to opt-in, of course)!

PHP Monitor also gives you quick access to various useful functionality (like accessing configuration files, restarting services, and more).

You can also add new domains as links, isolate sites, manage various services, and perform First Aid to fix all kinds of common PHP link issues.

🖥 System requirements

PHP Monitor is a universal application that runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel-based Macs.

• Your user account can administer your computer (required for some functionality, e.g. certificate generation)
• macOS 12.4 or later (Monterey, Ventura and Sonoma are supported)
• Homebrew is installed in the default location (/usr/local/homebrew or /opt/homebrew)
• Homebrew php formula is installed
• Optional but recommended: Laravel Valet

Starting with PHP Monitor 6.0, you do not need to have Laravel Valet installed for PHP Monitor to work. To get access to all features of PHP Monitor however, installing Valet is recommended.

For more information, please see SECURITY.md to find out which version of the app is currently supported.

🚀 How to install

Again, if you want to have access to all features of PHP Monitor, I recommend installing Laravel Valet first:

composer global require laravel/valet
valet install
valet trust

Currently, PHP Monitor is compatible with Laravel Valet v2, v3 and v4. Each of these versions of Valet support slightly different PHP versions, which is why legacy versions remain supported. Please note that some features are not available in older versions of Valet, like site isolation.

Manual installation (recommended, first time only)

Once that's done, you can download the latest release, unzip it and place it in /Applications.

Installation via Homebrew

Prior to version 5.8, this was the recommended way of installing PHP Monitor.

If you prefer to install the app via Homebrew, you can also run the following:

brew tap nicoverbruggen/homebrew-cask
brew install --cask phpmon

⬆️ How to update

The recommended method of updating the app to the latest version is to use the built-in updater.

If you have a very slow internet connection, the updater may report that the download has timed out. In that case, you may wish to manually update by downloading the latest release and placing the app in /Applications.

(You may also use Homebrew to update PHP Monitor, but this will require you to approve the app every time an update is installed. If you use the built-in updater, this won't be necessary.)

⚡️ Launchers (Alfred, Raycast)

If you would like to integrate with your launcher of choice, you can also download an Alfred workflow or Raycast extension that works with PHP Monitor.

The app must be running in the background for these to work, and the Allow third-party integrations checkbox must be enabled in Preferences (it is by default).

🔑 Is the app signed & notarized?

Yes, the app is signed and notarized, meaning all you have to do is approve its first launch (or whenever it updates).

👨‍💻 Why build this?

I wanted to be able to see at a glance which version of PHP was linked, and handle dealing with Laravel Valet in a simple app without having to deal with the terminal every time.

Initially, I had an Alfred workflow for this — but it has now been replaced with this utility, which also does a good job at displaying additional information at a glance, like the current PHP version, memory limits, and more.

🐘 Why not use Laravel Herd?

If you don't need to customize your local PHP setup and just want an easy and ready-to-go environment to start coding, Laravel Herd is probably more than sufficient for many use cases.

If you need more customization and flexibility I encourage you to consider PHP Monitor in combination with Laravel Valet or some other solution like Docker (with Laravel Sail, for example).

🤬 The app won't start?!

PHP Monitor performs some integrity checks to ensure a good experience when using the app. You'll get a message telling you that PHP Monitor won't work correctly in a variety of scenarios.

Follow instructions as specified in the alert in order to resolve any issues.

(If the app crashes at launch without showing you any of these messages, you might have a non-standard Homebrew and Valet setup. Those are not supported.)

🙋‍♂️ FAQ & Troubleshooting

If you are having issues, the first thing you should be doing is installing the latest version of PHP Monitor and Laravel Valet. This can resolve a variety of issues. To upgrade Valet, run composer global update. Don't forget to run valet install after upgrading.

If you're still having issues, here's a few common questions & answers, as well as issues and solutions:

{
    "scan_apps": [],
    "services": [],
    "presets": [
        {
            "name": "Legacy Project",
            "php": "8.0",
            "extensions": {
                "xdebug": false
            },
            "configuration": {
                "memory_limit": "128M",
                "upload_max_filesize": "128M",
                "post_max_size": "128M"
            }
        }
    ],
    "export": {}
}

{
    "scan_apps": [],
    "services": ["mailhog", "mysql"],
    "presets": [],
    "export": {}
}

{
    "scan_apps": [],
    "services": [],
    "presets": [],
    "export": {
        "COMPOSER_HOME": "/absolute/path/to/composer/folder"
    }
}

{
    "scan_apps": ["Xcode", "Kraken"]
}

📝 Having another issue?

I did not include any tracking or analytics software, so if you encounter issues, let me know via an issue.

💵 Support me?

PHP Monitor is available entirely free of charge, but if you can afford it a donation helps keep the project alive and the app maintained.

You can find a sponsor link at the top of this repo or you could click the link here to be taken to my sponsorship page.

Donations really help with the Apple Developer Program cost, and keep me motivated to keep working on PHP Monitor outside of work hours (I do have a day job!).

😎 Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to:

• Everyone supporting me via GitHub Sponsors
• Everyone who has donated via my sponsor page
• The Homebrew team & Valet maintainers
• Various folks who reached out when PHP Monitor was still very much a small app with a handful of stars or so
• Everyone who has left feedback and reported bugs
• Everyone in the Laravel community who shared the app, especially on Twitter

Thank you very much for your contributions, kind words and support.

🚜 How it works

Loading info about PHP in the background

This app runs php-config --version in the background periodically, usually whenever your Homebrew configuration is modified. A filesystem watcher is used to determine if anything changes in your Homebrew's bin directory.

PHP Monitor also checks your .ini files for extensions and loads more information about your limits (memory limit, POST limit, upload limit). See also the section on Config change detection below.

Switching PHP versions

This utility will detect which PHP versions you have installed via Homebrew, and then allows you to switch between them.

The switcher will disable all PHP-FPM services not belonging to the version you wish to use, and link the desired version of PHP. Then, it'll restart your desired PHP version's FPM process. This all happens in parallel, so this should be a bit faster than Valet’s switcher.

If you're using Valet 3 or newer, versions of PHP-FPM required to keep isolated sites up and running will also be started or stopped as needed.

Config change detection

PHP Monitor watches your filesystem in the relevant conf.d directory for the currently linked PHP version.

Whenever an .ini file is modified, PHP Monitor will attempt to reload the current information about the active PHP installation.

If an extension or other process writes to a single file a bunch of times in a short span of time (< 1 sec), PHP Monitor will only reload the active configuration information after a while (with a slight delay).

Site detection

1. Location of your sites: PHP Monitor uses the Valet configuration file to determine which folders to look into. Each folder is scanned and then PHP Monitor will validate if a composer.json file exists to determine the desired PHP version.
2. Sites secured or not secured: Whether the directory has been secured is determined by checking if a matching certificate exists under Valet's Certificates directory for that site name.
3. Project type: PHP Monitor checks your composer.json file for "notable dependencies". If you have laravel/framework in your require, there's a good chance the project type is Laravel, after all.

Note If you have linked a folder in Documents, Desktop or Downloads you might need to grant PHP Monitor access to those directories for PHP Monitor to work correctly.

Want to know more?

If you want to know more about how this works, I recommend you check out the source code.

I have done my best to annotate as much as humanly possible, and have avoided using an overly complicated architecture to keep the code as easy to maintain as possible. The code isn't perfect by a long shot (lots of cleanup can still happen!) but the application works well.

I also have a few tests for key parts of the application that I found needed to be tested. In the future, I would like to add even more tests for some of the UI stuff, but for now the tests are more unit tests than feature tests.

For more detailed information for developers, please see the documentation file for developers.