Hey HN,
Like many of you, I've spent countless hours wrestling with local development setups on macOS. Juggling different PHP or Node.js versions for various projects, manually generating SSL certs (and still getting browser warnings!), or figuring out how to reliably test email sends locally – it all felt like too much friction.
That's why I built ServBay. It's my solution to streamline this whole process.
ServBay is a native macOS application with a GUI designed to bundle and manage all the essential services you need for local web development. This includes web servers (Nginx, Caddy, Apache), databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB), languages (PHP, Python, Java, .NET, Node.js, Ruby, Rust), LLM (Ollama), and other handy tools like Redis and Memcached, all in one place.
Here's how ServBay aims to make your life easier:
- One-Click Simplicity: Spin up and manage multiple services and their versions (e.g., PHP 5.6 through 8.3+, Node.js LTS versions, Python2.7/3.5 - 3.14) with just a few clicks. No more complex command-line juggling for common tasks.
- Automatic SSL: Get automatic SSL certificates for your local domains (e.g., project.dev, app.local, or even your real domain mapped locally). Say goodbye to manual mkcert rituals and browser security warnings.
- Integrated Mailpit: Test email functionality effortlessly. ServBay includes Mailpit, which captures all outgoing mail locally for easy inspection and debugging, no external SMTP needed.
- Flexible Domain Management: Easily set up custom local domains for your projects. ServBay handles the host file modifications for you.
- True Multi-Version Support: Run different versions of PHP or Node.js side-by-side and assign specific versions to individual sites/projects .
- One-Click Backup & Restore: Quickly back up your crucial configurations and databases, and restore them just as easily.
- Comprehensive Service Stack: Includes Nginx (Apache support planned), PHP (many versions), Node.js, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Memcached, and we're always looking to add more based on demand.
ServBay aims to be simpler than manually configuring everything with Homebrew or managing complex Docker setups for common web development stacks on macOS, while being significantly more feature-rich, flexible, and macOS-native than traditional MAMP/XAMPP.
You can check it out and download it from:
https://www.servbay.com
https://github.com/ServBay/ServBay
ServBay is a commercial product, but there's a free trial available so you can see if it fits your workflow.
I've poured a lot of effort into making ServBay genuinely useful, and I'd be thrilled to hear your thoughts, feedback, and any feature requests. How does this compare to your current macOS dev setup? What are your biggest pain points that something like ServBay could solve?
Thanks for checking it out!
