How to Install FreeScout on macOS

FreeScout is an open-source help desk software that allows you to manage your customer support easily. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install FreeScout on macOS.

Requirements

Before we can start the installation process, please make sure that you have the following prerequisites:

  • A macOS operating system
  • php >= 7.2
  • MySQL or MariaDB
  • Composer installed

Installation Steps

  1. Download the latest release of FreeScout from the official Github repository https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout.

  2. After the download is complete, extract the compressed file to a directory that you can easily access. For this tutorial, we will extract the file to the Downloads folder.

  3. Open the terminal and navigate to the extracted folder using the cd command. In our example:

cd ~/Downloads/freescout
  1. Run the following command to install the required packages using Composer:
composer install
  1. Create a new file named .env in the root folder of FreeScout:
touch .env
  1. Copy the contents of the .env.example file to our newly created .env file:
cp .env.example .env
  1. By default, FreeScout uses SQLite as its database. However, for better performance, it is recommended to use MySQL or MariaDB as a database. Update the following fields in the .env file with your database information:
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=database_name
DB_USERNAME=database_username
DB_PASSWORD=database_password
  1. Generate the application key:
php artisan key:generate
  1. Run the migration command to create necessary tables in the database:
php artisan migrate
  1. Create a symbolic link with public storage:
php artisan storage:link
  1. Finally, run the FreeScout server by executing the following command:
php artisan serve
  1. Open your web browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000 to access the FreeScout web interface.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed FreeScout on your macOS system.