I usually drag the app to my system tray as well which allows me to launch the app just a little faster when I'm working. Go to and download the free trial Click on the PhpStorm-7.1.3.dmg file in your downloads folder to mount the disk image Click and drag the PS icon into the Applications folder as you would any mac application. Installing it may be a bit daunting, so I hope this discussion will help you tip toe around any gotchas, there are a couple: At only $99 for individual developers, what more could you want? If you’re running Php5.4 it can launch the built in web server for debugging, ftp capability, a database browser, as well as a terminal and ssh sessions, an event log, Vagrant and Composer integration, deployment capabilities, a tools window, and lots of editor tweaks and configurable key maps, it’s also phpunit aware. It boasts version control integration, a debugger with logging and a profiler.
Well, I believe Jetbrains has come as close as anybody has so far with PHPStorm, still can’t turn on the hot water but almost anything else you can think of is here. I’ve been searching for the “perfect” IDE for a very long time now (more than 20 years), I’ve seen some that were really close but not cheap, some were free (eclipse) but lacking, I was looking for everything but the kitchen sink.