Installing and using DDEV

DDEV is a powerful tool for local TYPO3 development. It automates the setup of PHP, database, webserver, and other services using Docker, making local development easy, fast, and consistent across platforms.

This guide assumes that you are setting up TYPO3 locally using DDEV. For deploying TYPO3 to a live server, see Deploying TYPO3.

Some hosting providers also host DDEV projects, allowing you to develop locally and deploy seamlessly.

Note

Like TYPO3, DDEV is open source software that only exists due to the generosity of community members and sponsors. Read more about how to support DDEV.

Table of contents

Install Docker

Docker is required to run DDEV containers.

Visit docker.com and download the latest version for your operating system.
Follow the installation instructions for your platform (Windows, macOS, or Linux).

Install DDEV

Once Docker is running, install DDEV by following the official installation instructions:

Installing DDEV

This page covers installation for macOS, Linux, Windows, and WSL, and is kept up-to-date.

Check your DDEV installation

After installing, verify that Docker and DDEV are available:

docker --version
ddev version

If both commands return version information, installation was successful.

Note

If you encounter problems installing DDEV, support is available via the DDEV Discord server.

When DDEV is up and running, you can continue with Installing TYPO3 with DDEV.

Update DDEV

DDEV releases frequent updates with new features, bug fixes, and improvements. It is recommended to keep DDEV up to date.

For instructions on how to update DDEV on your operating system, see the official DDEV Upgrade Guide.

After updating, verify the installed version:

ddev version

Managing the database

Running ddev start automatically creates a database for you. DDEV also creates the file config/system/additional.php, containing the database credentials.

You can access your database using any local database client.

On Windows, you can quickly open the database in HeidiSQL:

ddev heidisql

Other popular database clients include TablePlus, Sequel Ace, and DBeaver.

For more details, see the DDEV documentation on Database GUIs.

Sending emails

DDEV captures outgoing mails and stores them for review. You can view sent emails with:

ddev launch -m

Stopping a DDEV instance

If you want to stop all running DDEV projects, run:

ddev poweroff

The projects will remain configured and databases will be persisted.

Deleting a DDEV instance

If you want to delete the project you created, run the following command inside your project root folder:

ddev delete --omit-snapshot

This removes all containers for the project and deletes the database.

Afterwards you can safely delete the project root folder manually if needed.

DDEV documentation

You can find detailed documentation at DDEV Documentation. There is also a TYPO3 Quick Start that parallels this guide.