Herd Windows Updates & Release Notes

Herd 2.0 is here!

After months of hard work, we are excited to show you a redesigned and new Herd experience. This release brings a new applications window, Herd Studio, worktree support, automatic artisan dev support, Laravel Cloud support, self-healing, and much more!

Herd Studio

We’re introducing Herd Studio! The easiest way to interact with your agents right from your local sites. Just click on the “Edit with Herd” badge on any of your sites and jump into an opencode-powered agent chat - with additional context to make sure your agents spend less time guessing.

Parallel workspaces with separate databases for you and your agents

This one has been requested for quite a while! Herd now automatically detects available git worktrees and makes them available as a subdomain of your site - so every agent can automatically verify its work for you. The herd CLI also comes with a range of new commands to make copy-on-write creation of individual site workspaces really easy.

Artisan Dev support

Ever visited a local site only to find out that you still have to start a queue worker, Vite and more? Those days are over as Herd can automatically start php artisan dev or vite for you when you visit your site locally. Click on the Herd Studio badge to quickly inspect the state of your commands, or jump into a terminal.

Your applications have a new home

Herd 2.0 gives your applications a dedicated window, so you can quickly create a new app, check out your agents’ workspaces or deploy your apps.

Laravel Cloud support

Herd has added Laravel Cloud support - just connect your Cloud account with Herd and you can deploy your applications straight from Herd’s UI.

And much more!

Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed herd php:update and the Update button in Settings hanging forever after the download
• herd php:update no longer reinstalls a PHP version that is already up to date
• Fixed instances of Herd windows crashing on Windows 11 with Smart App Control turned on
• PHP updates now specify a better error message
• The Update button no longer disappears after a failed PHP update
• herd php:update exits with code 1 when the update is declined or fails
• Herd now starts when config.json is open in another program, for example Zed. Settings are saved once the file is free again
• Better validation on port fields
• Herd now shows a dialog when Windows can’t open a site in the browser, for example when the default browser is no longer installed
• Fixed a blank tray popup after its page failed to load, and the tray popup can no longer be resized
• Fixed the Node settings page loading forever when nvm was locked by another process
• Fixed MCP settings and Herd Studio errors when antivirus software blocks php.exe or git.exe from starting
• Fixed several crashes in the Dumps window, Applications inspector, licensing page, site previews and agent notifications
• Restored the database shortcut in the site inspector
• Fixed herd php:install 8.4 asking which version to install instead of installing 8.4
• herd php:install, herd isolate and herd init no longer switch your global PHP version
• Fixed PHP requests to secured .test sites over HTTPS failing with “certificate verify failed”
• Updated the bundled CA certificates so Herd and PHP no longer trust the leaked eMudhra intermediates
• Fixed Vite failing to load assets for sites linked through a symbolic link or junction
• The “Let’s build something amazing” composer in the Applications window no longer takes up the top of the window permanently; it now opens when you click New or press Ctrl+N, or while you have no applications yet
• List mode in the Applications window now shows every application, not just favorites and recent apps
• The Applications window remembers its size, position and maximized state
• Double-clicking an application now opens the site itself; Open and Enter still go to Herd Studio
• Fixed an issue where dots in new application names were replaced with hyphens, so console.example became console-example.test
• Fixed framework detection for non-Laravel projects: Symfony, WordPress, Craft, Magento, Drupal and other frameworks are recognized again and show their icon, projects with a public/ front controller get a driver, and Joomla and Contao drivers were added
• Fixed an issue where a parked folder with a number-only name like 2024 broke the hosts file update and stopped every .test site from resolving
• Fixed an issue where a locked file or a WSL folder inside a parked path stopped the hosts file from being updated on launch
• Parked paths that no longer exist are now skipped when writing the hosts file, and herd park stores the absolute path
• Fixed the New Application wizard failing when the sites folder is on a drive that is not connected
• Fixed errors on the PHP settings page while a PHP version was still installing or after a failed installation
• PHP installation failures now show the actual error message
• Fixed an error in the Mail window when opening a link to a mail that was deleted
• Fixed a “Could not get blob data” crash while capturing site previews
• Fixed an error reported when quitting Herd while PostgreSQL was still shutting down
• Herd no longer crashes when its internal API port cannot be opened; Settings → General shows the error instead
• Fixed errors when Windows blocked Herd from starting a helper process, for example through a security policy
• Fixed failed update downloads causing errors; the updater now shows a message and lets you retry instead of hanging on “Downloading update”
• Reduced the GPU usage of the animated background behind the empty Insights and Mail windows, which could sit at 90% GPU on integrated graphics
• Fixed an issue where sites without a recognized driver disappeared from the Applications window after updating to 2.0
• Fixed an issue where unlinking, securing or isolating a site failed silently; the Applications window now shows what went wrong
• Fixed the PHP version picker showing the new version even though switching the site’s PHP version had failed
• Fixed a stale environment error in the application inspector when switching between sites
• Fixed an issue where a half-installed NVM (for example after a declined UAC prompt) was treated as installed and caused errors on the Node settings page; the Node page now offers to install NVM again
• Fixed errors on the Node settings page when Herd’s NVM is not installed
• Fixed an issue where keyboard shortcuts consisting of modifier keys only could be saved and broke shortcut registration on every launch; invalid stored shortcuts are now cleared automatically
• Added support for Delete, Insert and numpad keys in keyboard shortcuts, and Herd now tells you when a key can’t be used
• Claude Code is now shown as connected through its CLI in the AI settings, onboarding and What’s New
• Fixed a crash when a site preview response was too large; site previews are now capped at 10 MB
• Fixed an issue where site preview snapshots failed when the disk was full

New features

• Added support for the PHP 8.6 beta
• Added CPX as a bundled command-line tool
• Service binaries can now be reinstalled from Settings → Services (currently available for PostgreSQL)
• Sites with internationalized domain names are now served correctly
• Added Node.js 24 LTS to the available Node versions

Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed Herd writing duplicate extension entries in php.ini, causing “Module herd is already loaded” warnings
• Newer Expose binaries are no longer overwritten when Herd updates its bundled copy
• Updated the built-in Expose binary
• Updated the built-in Laravel Installer
• Updated the built-in Composer binary
• Updated the built-in cacert.pem bundle

New Features

The Laravel Forge integration now supports organizations

Added herd php:update all to update every installed PHP version in a single command

Added a button to copy the mail server’s environment variables directly from the Mail window

Fixes and Improvements

Migrated the Laravel Forge integration to the v2 API with granular OAuth scopes and automatic token refresh; integrations that need to update the scopes show a Reconnect option

Fixed the Forge account settings link opening a 404 page

Fixed a missing separator between multiple To and CC addresses in the mail viewer

Fixed a mail server crash when a message had no valid Date header, and hardened email processing against errors

Added the .mjs MIME type to the bundled Nginx config

Improved Craft CMS log viewer detection

Hardened site information parsing

Security fixes

Updated the built-in Forge binary

Updated the built-in Composer binary

Updated the built-in Laravel Installer

Updated the built-in cacert.pem bundle

New features

• Services can now be cloned directly from the context menu in Settings

• You can now manage services directly from the command line with new
  herd services:*
  commands:

  • list, create, clone, delete, start, , and
  • stop

• Added
  herd php:list
  and
  herd php:update
  commands for managing PHP versions via CLI

• Added
  herd laravel:update
  command to automatically update the Laravel Installer without opening the GUI

• Added Svelte as a starter kit option in the site creation wizard

Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed an issue where
  herd share
  didn’t respect the
  expose.yml
  configuration file

• Fixed an issue where installed Node.js versions were not sorted by major version

• Fixed an issue where restarting the internal API server was not possible after changing the port

• Updated the built-in Composer binary

• Updated the built-in Laravel Installer

New features

• You can now toggle watching for “Dumps” individually
• Added “Laravel Boost” as an option in the site wizard

Fixes and Improvements

Running

• herd link (via CLI or GUI) will update your .env with the correct app URL
• Fixed an issue with myBB in combination with Herd
• Fixed an issue where running herd init would not work with MinIO
• Fixed an issue where installing Reverb would fail on PHP 8.5
• Dump settings are now disabled when general dump interception is paused
• Updated the built-in Expose binary
• Updated the built-in Laravel installer
• Updated the built-in Composer binary
• Updated the built-in cacert.pem file

New features

• The “Sites” window is now integrated into the settings and received a major design overhaul
• You can now add “aliases” (links) right from the sites UI, by right-clicking on a site in the list
• Sites with aliases/links now get grouped together
• You can now hide sites that do not have a valid driver
• Sites can be grouped individually
• The PHP ini settings can now be configured for each installed PHP version individually
• New instances of the “Reverb” service now contain a debugging dashboard that can be opened from the services window

Fixes and Improvements

• Using herd isolate with a PHP version that is not yet installed, now installs the specified version
• We fixed an issue with the mailserver in combination with CC email recipients