What’s new in Local 9.2.3

Updates

• Include the Microsoft’s latest Visual C++ Redistributable for Windows compatibility with PHP 8.4.4
• Upgrade Composer to 2.8.6
• Upgrade Local Core to use Electron v33 with Node v20

Fixes

• Fix confusing wording during Local Connect when no remote site is selected. Forum Post
• Fix broken keyboard shortcuts under Windows - Ctrl + i (Import site), Ctrl + n (Create new site), and Ctrl + , (Open Preferences) are all functional.

What’s New in Local 9.2.2

Fixes

• Prevent an issue where Local could fail to connect to MySQL on Windows, resulting in a “connect to server at ::1 failed” message after updates.
• Update MySQL 8.0.35 with missing Windows dlls that caused MySQL to fail to start for some Windows users in Local 9.2.0.
• Give MySQL more time to start before Local gives up trying to connect to it, to help with large databases or slower environments. (Timeout extended from ~7 seconds to ~25 seconds for MySQL 8.0.35, 8.0.16, 5.7.28 and MariaDB 10.4.32.)
• Existing sites running MySQL 8.0.16 will now only be upgraded to 8.0.35 automatically on Apple Silicon (instead of on all platforms as in 9.2.0). This helps macOS Silicon users avoid Rosetta just to run MySQL 8.0.16, without impacting MySQL versions on platforms that have no reason to upgrade existing sites. New sites you create in Local 9.2.2 will still use MySQL 8.0.35 by default on all platforms.

What’s New in Local 9.2

Features

• Local is now fully Apple Silicon native on macOS. PHP, nginx, MySQL 8.0.35+, rsync, ssh, Apache, Mailpit, and authentication applets all use Apple Silicon or Universal binaries.
• Choose your WordPress site’s language during site creation. Find the new “language” setting under “Advanced” on the “Set up WordPress” screen during new site creation.
• New global setting to set your default WordPress site language when creating new sites. Find this under “New site defaults” → “Default Site Language”.
• Updated MySQL to 8.0.35 from 8.0.16. Sites running 8.0.16 will automatically upgrade to 8.0.35 when Local launches. Macs using Intel 8.0.16 binaries will now use Apple Silicon under 8.0.35.
• Updated WP-CLI to 2.11 from 2.10.
• Updated MariaDB (Windows only) to 10.4.32.

Fixes

• Adjust remote binary download to correctly fetch binaries when build numbers reach double digits.
• Automatically display latest license info for Local’s dependencies under About Local → Acknowledgements.

What’s New in Local 9.1.1

Fixes

• Sites with Instant Reload active no longer cause a 502 error. This requires that you also update Instant Reload to version 1.1.4 or higher.
• ‘nginx’ no longer appears twice in the ‘web server’ drop-down for users who upgraded from earlier Local versions.

What’s New in Local 9.1.0

Breaking Changes

• Local now requires macOS 12 or higher.

Features

• New sites you create with Local use PHP 8.2.23 instead of PHP 8.1.29. PHP 8.1.29 is still available to download if required.
• PHP 8.3.11 is available to download.
• The nginx version was updated from 1.16.0 to 1.26.1. Existing sites are automatically upgraded.
• nginx uses a native binary on Apple Silicon systems instead of an Intel binary.
• “Go to site folder” now reads “Site folder”.
• The “VS Code” button opens sites in new windows instead of replacing any existing open VS Code windows.
• “NEW” badges and banners were removed from Blueprints and Live Links menus.
• Local is configured to support Server Sent Events by default. nginx users will need to set header( 'X-Accel-Buffering: no' ); in their PHP scripts for SSE to work.
• .mjs files use the correct mime type.

What’s New in Local 9.0.5

Features

• Adds a button to open a site in VS Code
• Updated button label of “Open site shell” to just “Site shell”
• Updated “Connect to WPE” file ignore rules to prevent errors when pushing a site live

What’s New in Local 9.0.4

Features

• Updated WPCLI from 2.9.0 to 2.10.0
• Upgraded to PHP 8.1.29 as the Preferred version, now including AVIF image support. This enhancement aligns with WordPress 6.5’s new AVIF editing capabilities in the media library.
• In addition to PHP 8.1.29, new versions of 8.2.20, and 8.3.8 also include AVIF image support and are available for previous releases of Local.

Bug Fixes

• Pushes to WP Engine will no longer fail with permission errors about the wp-cache-memcached plugin.
• New sites now correctly use your “environment” preference under “new site defaults”. Choose “custom” there to make Local present custom site options instead of preferred ones for new sites.
• Windows users opening the command prompt with “open site shell” will no longer see “ssh not recognized” if you type “ssh” at the prompt.
• Fixed type definitions to prepare for future updates to PHP 8.3, 8.2 and 8.1.

What’s New in Local 9.0.2

Bug Fixes

• Fixes an issue on Windows where Mailpit wasn’t capturing outbound mail from Local sites using Apache.

What’s New in Local 9.0.1

Improvements

• The ability to create new sites on WP Engine without having to leave the Local app is here! Previously, this workflow required users to leave the app, enter the WP Engine portal in their browser, create a site, wait for it to finish building, and only then return to the Local app to begin the push. Now, Local automates these steps for you!

• While connected to WP Engine, users who push their site will see a new “Push to a new site” option. Simply choose the account you wish to have the site created on, name it, choose your environment type and name and Local will create the site on your behalf. Local will automatically begin the push once notified that the newly created site is ready on WP Engine.

  • Note: This is currently only available for WP Engine users.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a regression where Add-ons couldn’t register components using the routes\[site-info] hook. See: #41914 and #41712
• Fixes a regression introduced in Local v8.3.2 that prevented the WP Engine push/pull ignore files (.wpe-push-ignore and .wpe-pull-ignore) from properly being excluded in Local Connect. As a result, caching of file differences in the MagicSync experience has been removed. See: #41906

Third Party Dependencies

• Upgraded Electron to v28.2 to include the latest security and performance improvements.

Thank you to the Local community for helping us find and test fixes for these regressions!

What’s New in Local 8.3.2

Bug Fixes

• Fixes an issue with Connect to WP Engine where Local wasn’t correctly regenerating its SSH key when logging into multiple WP Engine user accounts.

What’s New in Local 8.3.1

Improvements

• A new and improved Connect experience is here! Local Connect to WP Engine and Flywheel is taking a big step forward with a couple of highly-requested features, several bug fixes, an improved UI, and better reliability and logging, including:

  • Database-only pushes and pulls: No need to wait for a file difference to load anymore. Don’t want to include any files? Simply check the box next to Database and let Local get to work.
  • Improved MagicSync experience: MagicSync is no longer controlled by a toggle in Local’s user preferences. Instead, it is enabled by default and accessible by choosing “Select Files” in the Connect experience. Large folders are collapsed by default and changes are summed at the folder level, allowing users to dig deeper by expanding if needed. Determining remote server file differences got a speed boost, and the results are cached for 5 minutes for quick results as you navigate between sites.
  • Account separation: Previously, all sites a user had access to were displayed in the same sites dropdown. For users with access to many, potentially hundreds, of sites, this led to a lot of searching. Now, sites are filtered by their associated account to make searching easier.
  • No more disconnecting sites in order to push/pull again: Previously, Local “locked in” a site’s last connection to a hosted site and environment. Users had to disconnect the site from the Connect tab when they wished to change that site + environment relationship. Now, Local remembers what you chose last but allows you to easily change the target site if desired.
  • Connected accounts in Preferences: Connected hosting accounts have been moved to “Connected accounts” inside Preferences to make management of host connections easier.
• Improved logging for errors encountered when communicating with WP Engine’s Customer API, enabling better troubleshooting with support.
• Mailhog has been replaced with Mailpit inside Local; Mailhog was no longer maintained while Mailpit is an actively supported alternative with all of the same functionality. Mailpit also includes a native binary for Apple Silicon that we have bundled, removing a dependency on Rosetta 2 for Apple Silicon users.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where WP Engine users were being logged out within Local Connect when the app was restarted. Now, users will remain logged in until their session expires (7 days of inactivity).
• Fixed a bug where Connect to WP Engine wasn’t respecting the excluded files list, including node_modules. Previously, this could lead to broken sites when the folder was overwritten. A full list of our file exclusions can be found here.
• Fixed a maxBuffer length exceeded error that users experienced when loading the file list in the Connect to WP Engine experience

What’s New in Local 8.2.1

Improvements

• Warp has been added as a default terminal option inside Preferences.
• Adminer has been replaced with AdminerEvo inside Local; Adminer was no longer maintained and AdminerEvo is a new, actively supported community alternative with all of the same functionality. Try it out in your site’s Database tab. 
• When connecting to WP Engine from Local, a success page will be displayed to the user in the browser with a prompt to open the Local app. This now mirrors the current experience provided to Flywheel users. 
• Accessibility improvements to Search inputs, Close buttons, Banners, and Toasts.
• Storybook Docs improvements for Alerts, Banners, Toasts, Input Search, anc Close button components.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the “Go to site folder” option inside a site’s dropdown menu was causing Finder to stall and require a force quit in macOS. 
• Resolved an issue where Local Connect could fail when a large number of SSH keys were defined in a user’s local config. 
• Fixed a bug that was preventing WP Engine users leveraging federated SSO from logging in to WP Engine with the switch to an Okta-based connect experience.

What’s New in Local 8.2.0

Improvements

• PHP 8.3 is available for both new and existing sites! Users can create a new site with the latest PHP release or switch an existing site to it from the PHP version dropdown in the Site Overview. 
• New Okta/OAuth flow for Connect to WP Engine - WP Engine customers will now login to the WP Engine portal with their username and password in a browser and Local will handle the rest! Users no longer have to generate and then copy and paste API keys.
• WP Engine SSH keys will be automatically created and deleted on the user’s behalf. When logging out from WP Engine inside Local, Local will delete the associated SSH keys both on the user’s machine and from the WP Engine user portal to prevent unused or abandoned SSH keys from sticking around. 
• Accessibility - Improve markup, headings, and landmark labels to make content within the app easier to identify and navigate using assistive technology. 

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue that prevented macOS users running macOS 10.15 (Catalina) from successfully pushing and pulling site due to an updated version of OpenSSH. Local will use a version of OpenSSH that is compatible when it detects users are on macOS Catalina. 
• Fixes a bug that had caused the clickable region of external links inside Local to be extremely small; no more hunting for where to click!

What’s New in Local 8.1.0

Improvements

• Improvements to Local sidebar (left-hand navigation), including more keyboard accessibility and new hover and active states for all icons.
• Adds a waffle icon to the sidebar to quickly jump between developer tools built and maintained by WP Engine. Take some time to explore and find other tools that could speed up your workflow!
• WP-CLI has been updated to the latest version, v2.9.0, within the site shell.
• Using Electron’s safeStorage module, user tokens and credentials when connecting to Local Hub, Flywheel, and WP Engine now go through additional encryption when stored and accessed on a user’s machine.
• Adds additional caching capabilities for common network requests made by Local to display lists of available services (PHP, database, etc.). Fewer network requests means a more performant and efficient Local!

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where Local’s wp-cli config was not pointing to the correct database socket, causing several commands (clean, create, drop, reset) to fail. These commands will now execute successfully.

What’s New in Local 8.0.2

Bug Fixes

• Ignore the user’s ssh config file to avoid potential conflicts/errors when pushing or pulling to WP Engine.

What’s New in Local 8.0.1

Bug Fixes

Resolves a bug that prevented Flywheel users from successfully pushing sites on Local v8.0.0.

Third Party Dependencies

Upgrades the version of OpenSSH used by Local, improving reliability and security of Local Connect.

What’s New in Local 8.0.0

Improvements

• Composer has been updated to v2.6.2 within the site shell.
• Accessibility: We’ve added ARIA labels to the main vertical navigation inside Local to make Local more compatible with screen readers. More accessibility updates to come!
• We now use WP-CLI for generating Salts for sites. This allows for simplified logic for generating salts after deprecating PHP 5.6 within Local.

Bug Fixes

• During a failed site import, we fixed an issue with overflowing error modals that could not be closed when the number of files listed was too long. The list will now be truncated and a full error message can be copy-pasted to clipboard.

Third Party Dependencies

• Upgraded to Electron v25.8.1 and Node 18 to include latest security and performance improvements. This version of Electron drops support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. Users on these operating systems will not be able to install Local v8.0.0 or higher.
• Removed deprecated request NPM package.

What’s New in Local 7.2.1

Improvements

• Local’s preferred PHP version has been updated to PHP v8.1.23.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved a permissions error in Local v7.2.0 which prevented the auto-update window from successfully installing Local updates on macOS.

What’s New in Local 7.2.0

Improvements

• Local’s preferred PHP version has been updated to PHP v8.1.22 and updated to include standard extensions, including Imagick, across all operating systems.
• Local will now prompt users to update to the latest PHP patch version when it is available for download (i.e. PHP 8.1.9 -> PHP 8.1.22 in this release). Previously, the update logic only accounted for changes in major.minor releases; patch versions were ignored.
• As a result of our PHP automation and improved update logic, new versions of PHP 8.0, PHP 8.1, and PHP 8.2 are all available and include Imagick with the exception of PHP 8.2 on Windows specifically - this is a known issue in the WordPress community.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved a bug that was preventing users on Debian operating systems from creating new sites while in site domains mode.
• Fixed a UI issue in MagicSync that caused folders that contained a file with the same name as the parent folder to not nest correctly as folders were expanded and collapsed.

What’s New in Local 7.1.2

Improvements

• When exporting Local’s log files, we’ll now bundle an additional verbose logging file that can help the Local team and the rest of the community in troubleshooting those tough-to-track-down issues! This bundled download is found on the “Get Help” tab.

Bug Fixes

• Fixes a regression in 7.1.0 which prevented some users from pushing a site to WP Engine. The bug happens when local and remote environments have slightly different file lists, often due to additional jobs running on the site like plugin updates or developer build processes. See this post in the forums
• Resolved an issue that caused the “Check for Updates” button in Local’s File menu to not accurately show new versions that were available. Now, Local will show newer versions of Local available even if a user is not yet included the automated slow rollout.
• Fixed a bug that caused pulls from WP Engine to fail when the database was included and remote server contained private folders, such as a .git folder. The resulting “Permission denied” error has been addressed and Local will skip over files it does not have access to.
• Resolved an issue where PHP versions could not be updated to the newest available patch on Apple Silicon macOS. Previously, an update button would appear but could not be clicked. This has been resolved (and Imagick is bundled with PHP 8.2 on Apple Silicon!).

What’s New in Local 7.1.0

Improvements

• Push to WP Engine and our MagicSync functionality have been brought into the core Local application. In addition to improved reliability and error reporting, Local no longer ships with a separate binary that was responsible for handling these features.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where incorrect site data in the user’s sites.json file could cause a site to appear started in the Local UI when it was not running. The fix addresses both the writing of the incorrect data and changes how we determine a site’s running status.
• Fixed several issues where Connect to WP Engine was not functional for users on Linux and Windows. The underlying file pathing issues have been resolved and users on these operating systems should see a more stable feature.
• Fixed a bug in Live Links UI where the site’s URL, username, and password would appear as undefined the first time the Live Links tab was loaded. Previously, users had to navigate away from the tab and back again to see updated Live Links information.

Bug Fixes

• Fixes an issue where Windows users were unable to manually log into WP-Admin for new sites via username and password. This was due to misplaced salts in the wp-config.php file and has been addressed. See the community bug report here.

• Site start speed has been improved when selecting multiple sites and starting them simultaneously. This addresses slower performance that was introduced with Local v6.7.2. See the community discussion here.

What’s New in Local 7.0.1

Bug Fixes

• Fixes an issue that prevented add-ons from being installed on Local v7.0.0

What’s New in Local 7.0.0

Improvements

• Pulling to Local from WP Engine has been brought into the core Local application and updated to account for breaking changes on the WP Engine platform. This removes the dependency on a separate binary that is bundled and shipped with Local (WPE DevKit).
• A progress overlay has been added for site deletion, better communicating when Local is in the process of cleaning up site and host files during deletion.

Bug Fixes

• Local will now wait to remove sites from the user’s sites list until the deletion is complete. This will prevent sites from being deleted in the Local UI but stuck in the file system or causing conflicts in the host file.

What’s New in Local 6.7.2

Improvements

• WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE has been moved to the wp-config.php file and set to local for all newly created sites. Previously, this value lived in the local-bootstrap.php file. This should make the environment type easier to change programatically. See this feature request: Don’t define WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE
• The WordPress version bundled with Local has been updated to WordPress 6.2. This step has been added to the build pipeline and newer versions will be automatically bundled with subsequent releases.

Bug Fixes

• Open Site Shell now works as expected with non-default Terminal applications on macOS Ventura. This fixes a regression introduced in Local v6.7.1 that also affected Open Site Shell on Windows and Linux. Bug report here: New version of Local (v6.7.1) breaks terminal
• Salts are auto-generated in the wp-config.php file on site creation again; all newly created sites will see these values defined in the config file again. See this bug report: Lack of Salt Secret-Keys in new installations

What’s New in Local 6.7.1

Bug Fixes

• Open Site Shell now properly launches Apple’s default Terminal on macOS Ventura again. This resolves the “(null) is not allowed to open documents in Terminal” error reported by users.
• Fixed a styling issue that was causing logo colors to be inverted when switching between light and dark modes.

What’s New in Local 6.7.0

Create groups in the sidebar and organize your sites! As one of the top requested features for quite some time, we’re particularly excited about this release. Create groups that make sense for your workflow, like separating personal sites from work sites, grouping sites by the client you’re working with, the stage in your build cycle, anything you like. Say goodbye to messy sidebars and hello to organization!

Improvements

• Users can create site groups in the sidebar and organize their site list. Features include:
  • Create, rename, and delete site groups from the context  menu next to a group name.
  • Drag and drop sites between groups to quickly organize your site list.
  • Move sites to a new or existing group via the right-click menu.
  • Start, stop, restart, or delete all sites in a group quickly from the context menu.
  • Reorder groups relative to each other via the right-click menu or by dragging them up and down in the sites list.
  • Sort sites in each group by recency via the clock icon at the top of the site list. By default, sites are sorted alphabetically.
• Replaced “Starred” sites and moved them to a new group with the same name.
• The sidebar and an individual group’s open/collapse state persists as you navigate, close, and reopen Local.
• Improved the drag area on the borders of the window, making Local easier to position on your screen.
• Imports from WP Migrate auto-select the PHP, web server, and database version closest to the production environment if Local offers the same major.minor version.

Bug Fixes

• When importing or pulling to an existing site, Local will respect the existing site’s current Xdebug settings. Otherwise, Local will default Xdebug to “OFF”.
• Fixed a bug where the chosen environment when importing a site was not actually applied to the site when it was created.

What’s New in Local 6.6.1

Improvements

• A new dropzone has been added to the “Create a site” screen. This makes it more clear that full sites can be easily imported or drag-and-dropped onto Local to create new sites.
• During site creation, sites that have been imported from a WP Migrate export will auto-select the PHP, web server, and database versions if Local offers an exact version match.
• Default WordPress Admin e-mail updated to dev-email@wpengine.local. This can be changed in Preferences.

Bugfixes

• Canceling a site import before it completes will correctly prevent the site from being created in Local.
• Fixed a bug that allowed sites to be cloned to an existing site name, causing Local to stall. Local will auto-increment the site name in the file path to avoid conflicting paths.
• Resolved an issue with sites created from Atlas Blueprints crashing when the site was opened in Local v6.6.0.

Third Party Dependencies

• Upgraded to Electron v21.3.4

What’s new in Local 6.6.0

Improvements

• An on/off toggle has been added to the Site Overview page that allows users to quickly turn Xdebug on or off for a site. Users no longer need to manually edit their site’s php.ini file to enable or disable Xdebug.
• WP-CLI has been updated to the latest version, v2.7.1, within the site shell.
• The WP-CLI update command has been reenabled, allowing users to update WP-CLI at will from the site shell.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue which prevented Windows users from successfully uninstalling an add-on in Local.

Third Party Dependencies

• Updated Local to Electron 21 to improve performance and stability.

What’s New in Local 6.5.2

Improvements

• Xdebug’s mode is now set to “debug, develop” to enable more complete stack traces on errors.
• PHP’s file_get_contents() or cURL methods will now use the same certificate bundle that WordPress’ HTTP API uses when making requests over HTTPS. This should make HTTPS requests to other sites/services more reliable.

Bug fixes

• When updating or swapping PHP versions on an Apple Silicon build, Local will grab the correct ARM64 binaries instead of those compiled for Intel.
• Missing name fields in a user’s sites.json file will not cause the missing services banner to be triggered.

What’s New in Local 6.5.1

Improvements

• Local now offers native builds for Apple silicon machines! Users with these machines should see improved performance. Applicable users can download this build from our releases page. 
• The “Preferred” environment within Local has been updated to PHP 8.1. 
• PHP 7.4 and PHP 8.0 patch versions have been merged in the Local UI. Local will automatically apply the PHP patch upgrade to sites the next time they are started. 
• Local’s Preferences can be easily accessed from the user avatar icon in addition to the existing File menu. 

Bug fixes

• Updated code signing of all of the bundled services that ship with Local to be signed by WP Engine. Mismatches in signing had caused issues on MacOS. 
• Resolved an issue that prevented Blueprints from being saved when users had made changes to their custom file exclusion filters in Preferences.
• SSL “Trust” button will properly display the trusted status for a site on Windows. 
• Resolved an issue that prevented users from uploading media to their site when using Apache on Windows. 
• Fixed an issue with WP-CLI on Windows for sites using PHP 8+ that prevented plugins from being uninstalled. 
• Downloading a service will no longer cause add-ons to appear uninstalled.

What’s New in Local 6.4.3

Note: Due to a certificate change in Local, existing Mac users will need to manually download this release to upgrade past previous versions. Read more about the change here: Updating to Local 6.4.3 on MacOS.

Improvements

• Added PHP 8.1.9 support for new and existing sites
• Updated available PHP versions (7.4.30 and 8.0.22)
• Enabled the intl PHP extension
• Added support for WebP images
• Updated Xdebug to version 3.1.5

What’s New in Local 6.4.2

Improvements

• Users can now search their list of remote and local sites when choosing where to push and pull sites in the Connect experience!

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue that prevented Flywheel users from pushing full site editing (FSE) changes to the remote host.

Improvements

• Blueprint details can be accessed by selecting “Show Details” from the Blueprint tab to display a Blueprint’s plugin, theme, PHP, and database information. This information will be present for all Blueprints created after version 6.4.1.
• Local’s push and pull icons have been updated in the Connect experience to make it more clear which direction files are being transferred.
• Version bumps to many of the npm packages we utilize to pull in the latest security patches.

Bug fixes

• Corrected an issue that caused sites with properly-trusted SSL certificates to show as untrusted within the Local UI. If you’re still experiencing ERR_CERT_INVALID errors, please see this forum post for troubleshooting.
• Fixed a bug that could result in Local throwing a “no open ports” errors when selecting multiple sites and attempting to start them at the same time.

What’s New in Local 6.4.0

Both Local and WordPress were created to help anyone build websites! With time and intentionality, we’ll continue to build on that mission by achieving Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level AA conformance in the future.

With this release, we’re working toward making Local a more accessible development tool for all users. Here’s how:

• Colors and contrast have been updated to meet accessibility standards throughout the app.
• A 3-dot context menu has been added next to the site’s name to allow access to features that previously existed only in the right-click menu.
• The ability to navigate within Local without using a mouse has been improved.

Improvements

• Blueprints have been added to the left-hand navigation menu in Local! Users can view and manage their Blueprints on this new page. Previously, Blueprints only appeared in the user preferences; with this change, Blueprints have been removed from Preferences.
• Blueprints can now be renamed from the Blueprints home page via the 3-dot context menu next to the Blueprint’s name.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue where port conflicts could prevent a Local site or its services from starting correctly. Local’s port allocation will now better handle conflicts when they occur.

What’s New in Local 6.3.1

Improvements

• Sites that have been built using the Atlas add-on are now supported in the import/export site workflows.
• WP-CLI has been updated to the latest version (2.6.0) within the site shell.
• MacOS app icons have been updated to be in line with Apple design standards.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue where an unselected default browser would lead to broken links inside Local.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Firefox from being selected as a default browser on Windows.
• Resolved PHP fatal errors thrown when attempting to install plugins over a Live Links connection.
• SSL certificates should not be duplicated on Chrome, resolving the ERR_CERT_INVALID errors some users experienced.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the front-end from spinning up on Atlas sites due conflicts with the release of Next 12.

What’s New in Local 6.3.0

Improvements

• Significant speed and performance improvements on MacOS! We’ve updated the version of Electron we’re using to resolve an upstream bug that was causing slowness when switching sites and performing routine tasks in Local. Local should feel much faster on MacOS than it had in previous versions.
• Users can now opt-in/opt-out of data collection and error reporting at any time under Preferences>Advanced. Previously, this was a one-time ask during application installation.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug with the Local UI where cloned sites appeared to be running even when they were stopped.
• Fixed a bug where Local incorrectly showed cloned sites as running when the original site was started.
• Resolved an issue that prevent a site domain from being changed when right-clicking on a site’s name from the site list.

What’s New in Local 6.2.1

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue that was causing Local Connect to fail when pulling new remote files with the MagicSync viewer

What’s New in Local 6.2.0

Improvements

• Local’s Preferred environment when creating new sites has been updated to PHP 7.4.1. Older versions of PHP are still available under Custom environments.
• A dynamic outage banner has been added to the Support tab within Local. It will only appear when the development team needs to communicate issues with underlying infrastructure that broadly affects Local users.
• A direct link to the WP Engine portal’s API credentials has been added to the Connect modal for customers who connect to WP Engine hosting.
• Local’s services will no longer start on port 10080 to avoid security conflicts with most browsers.
• Local’s certificates and code signing have been updated to WPEngine, Inc., consistent with other products in the WP Engine family.

Bug fixes

• Using Adminer on Linux works again for all versions of PHP. Previously, Adminer errored out on certain PHP versions.
• Resolved an issue that was causing Local error logs to be unreadable, making troubleshooting difficult for support and users.
• Resolved an issue where attempting to enable a Live Link on a site that had been cloned would result in a 500 error.

• Resolved several UI bugs within the MagicSync viewer:

  • Incorrectly displaying files changed between 12PM and 1PM as AM
  • Incorrectly showing new remote files as deleted when pulling to Local
  • Being unable to collapse deleted local files when pushing to a remote host

What’s New in Local 6.1.8

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where users were being automatically logged out from WP Admin after using the Admin button and successfully logging in.

What’s New in Local 6.1.7

Improvements

• The Support tab now includes a list of the most visited Local help docs along with the ability to search the community forums from within Local.

• The Support tab also includes a view of recent top posts in the Local community to see where conversations are happening. Users can link to specific posts, request a new feature, or report a bug from the “Community forums” section of this page.

• Local Connect users can quickly download a zip of their Local logs to provide Flywheel or WP Engine support for any troubleshooting. Users can jump directly to live chat from the “Local Connect help” section of this page.

• Local now creates 2 log files to document behavior, warnings, and errors. The local-lightning.log now only shows warnings and error messages, to make it more useful for troubleshooting specific issues. A second log, local-lightning-verbose.log will now be created that includes all logging output from Local, for reference when troubleshooting issues that require full context.

• One-Click Admin now includes an on/off toggle to improve visibility when the feature is on. The disabled state has been removed from the dropdown of selectable administrators to log in with.

What’s New in Local 6.1.5

Improvements

• Live Link information is now editable! Site URLs can be renewed with a different subdomain and the username and password fields can be changed before sharing your site with others.
• A new Live Links “Details for sharing” section within the Tools Tab allows you to quickly copy-paste all information to share out.
• Added an On/Off toggle for Live Links to make it more clear when your site is viewable by others and when it is not.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue where creating a Live Link before a tunnel had fully closed could generate a 500 error in the UI.

What’s New in Local 6.1.4

Bug fixes

• Resolved “SSL Certificate has expired” error when attempting to enable a Live Link.
• Due to an underlying bug with Electron, this bug fix is not retroactive to previous versions of Local. Users will need to update to Local 6.1.4+ to continue using Live Links.

What’s New in Local 6.1.3

Improvements

• Improved messaging when users lose internet connection while attempting to use features that require internet access (Live Links, Cloud Backups). 
• Updated Local to use the latest version of Adminer (4.8.1).

Bug fixes

• Resolved “host-name is not the same” error when pushing/pulling on Windows. This issue was causing intermittent failures when connecting to WP Engine.
• Resolved a bug that caused Live Links information to disappear and appear disabled when switching between sites in Local.

What’s New in Local 6.1.2

Improvements

• Performance improvements to Local on Big Sur have decreased load times when switching sites within the UI. More performance improvements are coming soon!
• Removed deprecated support form within Local, directing users to the Local forums for app help and live chat with Flywheel/WP Engine for managed hosting help. 

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that prevented users from checking for Local updates from the File menu dropdown.

What’s New in Local 6.1.1

Improvements

• Composer has been updated to the latest version (2.1.5) within the site shell.
• WP-CLI has been updated to the latest version (2.5.0) within the site shell.
• Sequel Pro has been removed as a suggested database management tool as it has been abandoned. Adminer is now the default database connection tool.

Bug fixes

• Site Host is visible again under the site’s Overview tab; this disappeared with a bug introduced in Local 6.0. If you’re using the Instant Reload add-on, this will require an update to the add-on as well! Please update Instant Reload to version 1.1.0 from the Add-ons menu.
• Fixed a Windows bug where site files on drives outside of the main drive were not accessible when using Apache.
• Submitting a support ticket no longer results in a failure message.

What’s New in Local 6.1.0

Improvements

• Organization workspaces within Local have been removed. All sites, personal or organization, will now appear in the user’s sites menu.
• MailHog has been moved from the Utilities tab to the Tools tab within the UI. 
• The Utilities tab has been removed from the Local interface to avoid confusion between Tools and Utilities. 
• We added additional validation when cloning a site from the Cloud Backups add-on to prevent duplicate site names. Duplicate names previously left the site in a broken state.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an incorrect link within the Connect tab.

What’s New in Local 6.0.0

We’re doubling-down on our commitment to give back to the WordPress community by making all Local tools and features, including those formerly only available with a paid Local Pro subscription, free and available to all Local users. Live Links Pro, Instant Reload, Link Checker, and MagicSync are all now available by default in the Local app and available to use with a free Local account.

In addition to Local Pro for everyone, we’re also launching our Cloud Backups Add-on! This add-on allows users to create secure backups of any project, offering connections to Google Drive and Dropbox. Simply connect your Local account to your cloud storage provider and begin backing up your sites to avoid lost work and easily restore sites to a known state.

Improvements:

• We’ve added new account creation workflows, including the ability to create an account with an email and password in addition to existing authentication options.
• Local Hub has been simplified and renamed to simply be your Local account. You can continue to manage all of your account information from the web portal like you have previously.
• MagicSync is now a global preference, and the default push/pull experience can be toggled in the Preferences menu. 
• Live Links Pro, now Live Links, will be accessible for all users by connecting your Local account.
• Link Checker and Instant Reload have been moved to the Local Add-ons Library. 
• Xdebug Add-ons have moved from the Utilities tab into the Tools tab within Local.
• The Cloud Backups Add-on will help you connect to a Google Drive or Dropbox account for one-click storage options. Easily restore a site to a cloud backup from the Tools tab.

Bug Fixes:

• Addressed performance issues with Link Checker and now gracefully handle switching sites within Local during a scan.
• Fixed an issue where profile pictures uploaded to your Local account were not pulling correctly into the Local app.
• Improve internet connectivity messaging to make it clear when a user has lost internet connection.

What’s New in Local 5.10.5

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug with One Click Admin Login functionality that caused it to fail if the site was using SSL
• Fixed a pop-up that was not displaying properly when pushing to WP 5.4.2

What’s New in Local 5.10.4

Improvements

• We have improved the performance in Link Checker when viewing a list of broken links.
• We will now throw an error and link users to a Help Doc if the “trust” for an SSL cert fails.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug preventing Ubuntu users from installing WordPress Plugins in the wp-admin.
• Fixed a bug preventing the wp db optimize command from working within a site shell.
• Improved the user experience of Instant Reload when logging into the WordPress admin.
• Fixed an error that was displayed when creating a PHP 8 site on Windows.
• Addressed a bug where the search/replace function was not correctly updating the domain within the post_content when pulling from WP Engine
• Local will now work with Windows 10 Pro!

Third Party Dependencies

• Updated Local to Electron 12 to improve performance and stability.

What’s New in Local 5.10.3

Improvements

• Live Links can now access Headless sites created with the “Atlas: Headless WP” Add-on.
• Added stability improvements to ensure Local site services are cleaned up when quitting and restarting Local.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where the site and admin URL were not correct when Instant Reload was enabled
• One-click Admin will now work with the WooCommerce plug-in installed
• Fixed issue where Local on Linux would prompt for password during every site start/restart if running libcap 2.43 or newer
• Fixed an issue introduced in Local Beta 5.10.2 where Local would automatically shut down if the Atlas add-on was installed

Lightning Service Updates

• Code sign PHP 7.4.1 so that it will successfully run on Big Sur

What’s new in Local 5.10.1

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where site services were not shutting down correctly. This should resolve issues with port conflict errors when using Site Domains Routing mode.

What’s New in Local 5.10.0

One-click Admin

• Added “One-click Admin” functionality to automatically log you in as the selected administrator. To enable it, select a user from the “One-click Admin” dropdown and any time you open the WordPress Admin from Local, you’ll be logged in as the selected user.

Improvements

• Replaced all remaining legacy tooltips with the new Tooltip component which renders above the rest of the UI (to ensure it does not get clipped)

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug on Windows that caused problems with importing a site if you already had quite a few sites created.
• Addressed an issue where the PHP8 lightning service was displaying in the ‘Installed Add-ons’ list.

What’s New in Local 5.9.9

Improvements

• Local now supports the import of new sites in .tar.gz archives (also known as tarballs)!
• Reworked the Tooltip component to render above the rest of the UI (to ensure it doesn’t get clipped).
• Link Checker now works with both localhost routing mode and Site Domains mode. 

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where users could not Connect to WP Engine in Ubuntu 20.04 due to missing lipcrypto.so
• Addressed an error users would receive when pulling from WPEngine when wp-cli tried to dump tablespaces

What’s New in Local 5.9.8

Improvements

• PHP 8 is available in Local for versions 5.9.7 and later.
• Tired of having to start a site before initiating a live link, connect event, or just opening the site? We’ve added functionality to each of those buttons so that they’ll start the site automatically if it’s not already running.
• UI improvements to the installed add-ons tab. Local will now notify you when an add-on has an available update.

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where Reveal in finder / explorer was not functioning properly.
• Addressed issues with Local updater that prevented some users from updating to the latest version of Local Lightning.
• Fixed bug that caused sites list to disappear if GraphQL port 4000 was already in use by another application.
• Database dumping will no longer fail with WordPress 5.6 on WP Engine platform.

Bug fixes

• Fixed regression that caused site services to not be properly stopped after Local was quit.
• Modified install process to not fail if Hello Dolly or Akismet can’t be deleted.
• Fixed bug related to pushing database changes to WP Engine with WordPress 5.6.

What’s New in Local 5.9.6

This release makes it easy to update the Lightning Services that Local uses to manage your WordPress sites!

Huh? A Lightning Service is a packaged piece of software along with config templates and TypeScript code to allow it to interface with Local. In fact, Lightning Services use Local’s Add-on API. . Some examples are:

• PHP 7.4.1, built for Windows, combined with its configuration file (php.ini)
• MySQL 8 for macOS, with the my.cnf file

These are separate downloads so that you only download software that your dev environment needs. If you’re on a Mac, you don’t need or want the Windows services.

Traditionally, the process of updating these was painful, but at least it didn’t happen often. As Operating Systems change and the Local team adds features or slays bugs - we saw that you needed a way to have the most up-to-date software without working for it!

Improvements

• Updated Local to use the latest version of Adminer
• UI improvements to the Local updater window
• UI improvements to add-on card views in both grid and list views
• UI improvement to the Details section of the Add-on Overview

Bug fixes

• Fixed bug for macOS BigSur users that prevented ‘open site shell’ from working as expected.
• Addressed bug where Nginx rules prevented sitemap.xml and robots.txt from working with SEO plugins.
• Tackled a bug that prevented users from selecting multiple sites (shift+select sites).
• Fixed bug that caused incorrect site status being displayed after cancelling a site Push to Flywheel.
• Fixed a bug where Pulling/Pushing to/from WP Engine was not working on macOS 10.13.
• Fixed issue with Instant Reload not reliably working on Windows since Local 5.8.1. Users can now confidently update to this version and Instant Reload will work on Windows as expected.
• Addressed the regression for site name target link size being too large.

What’s New in Local 5.9.4

A community developed add-on, TablesPlus is a modern, native, and friendly GUI for interacting with databases. This add-on only works on macOS at this time. To help improve the plugin to support Windows and Linux, contribute to the local-tablesplus Github repo.

Thank you Aubrey Portwood for developing this Local add-on!

Improvements

• Continued improvements to the Image Optimizer add-on including better handling of deleted site data.
• Improved the scrolling on the Acknowledgements window of the Local app.
• Image Optimizer will now display the number of images selected to optimize next to the Image Optimizer navigation title.
• Image Optimizer will now display a spinning icon to indicate the optimization is in progress.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where site returns a 502 error when updating plugins while Instant Reload is enabled.
• Canceling while pushing a site to Flywheel will stop the process and throw an error.
• The in-app updater for Local add-ons is now working as expected.
• Fixed a type in Nginx service conf for webp
• Fixed an issue where the Connect progress overlay wouldn’t always appear while attempting to pull a site from WPE staging.
• Imagick/Ghostscript is now properly compiled in 7.4.1 to load PDFs and allow WordPress to generate PDF thumbnails for Windows and MacOS.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue that caused sites with a database prefix other than “wp_” to fail importing or pulling.

What’s New in Local 5.9.2

Introducing Local Image Optimizer! Image Optimizer makes your site super speedy on mobile and improves page loads on desktop too, reliably boosting your site’s performance.

Image Optimizer will scan your local site for image files and compress images offline without cloud-based services! Simply navigate to Tools › Image Optimizer to get started with Image Optimizer. Make sure you’re using the latest version of the Image Optimizer Add-on (1.0.0) to get the latest features and improvements!

Improvements

• Added GraphQL API to query and control Local. More to come here soon!
• We’ve renamed the ‘Pro’ tab to ‘Tools’. This is still where users will find Pro tools like Instant Reload and Link Checker as well as our latest add-on, Image Optimizer.
• There should now be better handling of the position of Local’s window positioning when disconnecting from an external monitor. This should hopefully address the issue where Local opens and the window can’t be found.
• Polished up banner heights throughout the application to make them consistent.

Bug fixes

• Updated instances of Nginx to nginx to be in line with the preferred capitalization. Nginx is the company behind nginx, the webserver software.
• Local now handles multisite domains when switching routing modes
• Addressed a bug where scrolling was not working on Link Checker
• Fixed a bug where sometimes the last started time of the sites panel would disappear when quickly mousing over and out of the row.
• Fixed issue where clicking a link inside the release notes window was showing a blank screen.

Image Optimizer Add-on Improvements

• Maintain UI states when navigating away from Image Optimizer and back to it.
• Truncate file paths shown in Image Optimizer. (This prevents scrolling funkiness with the file list.)
• Image Optimizer will now indicate if there were no results after you’ve completed an image scan on an individual site.

We hope you’ve taken advantage of the new site star ⭐️feature. Continuing our efforts to offer better site organization in Local, in addition to ⭐️ starring sites, you can now view your Local sites list by order of sites most recently started. Simply click on the 🕘 and the sites you most recently started in Local will move to the top so you can get back to working on your most important work quickly and easily.

Improvements

• We’ve removed workspace limitations! Now when switching between different workspaces as Local for Teams customers and Local Pro customers, you will have access to all of the Pro features you know and love regardless of the workspace.
• Instant Reload will now show you the status of the services starting and stopping in the UI.
• You can now login to Local Hub with Google SSO!
• When authenticating with Local Hub, Local will now be brought to the foreground during the last step.
• In this release, we’ve addressed performance issues that users brought to our attention. Our team swarmed on making Local’s UI more responsive and faster than ever before.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that would persist the ‘Enable and Relaunch’ button of an add-on even in the event where an Add-on was already installed
• Fixed an issue where Local would not persist the site selection when the user navigated to another screen such as preferences
• Addressed a bug where the SSL certificate was not being generated for subdomains
• Fixed a regression with Live Links Pro where certain assets would not load correctly over Live Links Pro
• Fixed issue where Connect to WP Engine would not work in some situations on macOS due to rsync PATH conflicts
• … and other various minor UI bug fixes!

Improvements

• UI performance enhancements

Bug Fixes

• Addressed regression where the UI would drastically slow down or potentially even become unresponsive if you have more than 10-20 sites in Local

What’s New in Local 5.8.1

Introducing ⭐️ Star. You’ve asked for better ways to organize your Local sites and in this release we are introducing the ability to Star a Local site. Starring a site keeps it at the top of your sites list so you can get back to working on your most important work quickly and easily.

Improvements

• Instant Reload start/stop status is now clearly indicated in the UI.
• Windows users - Creating a WordPress site in Local is now faster than ever (up to 62 seconds faster in fact)!
• Local will now warn users about a compatibility issue between Localhost routing and multisite subdomains due to there inherent incompatibility
• Live Links Pro now handles domain replacement in static assets such as CSS files and HTML

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that would prevent users from creating a new site on MacOS High Sierra.

Third-party Dependencies

• Updated Local to Electron 9 to improve performance and stability.

What’s New in Local 5.7.5

Additions

• Implements the WordPress Core WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE constant so that developers can use the wp_get_environment_type() for functionality meant only for Local sites. See the WordPress Core dev notes for more information.

Improvements

• We’ve greatly improved the speed of Instant Reload!
• Local Hub now notifies users in the case their browser is not supported.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an edge-case where WP Engine users could push to a site with no environments.
• Users can now navigate away from the overview screen as a newly created site is in process to view to other sites.
• Resolved an issue for WP Engine users where Local would assume the remote site had a database causing an error.
• Fixed styling issue on Live Links Pro popup
• Fixed an authentication issue for Pro users that would require navigating away from Pro features and back to accurately reflect logged in/out state.

What’s New in Local 5.7.4

Improvements

• The updater will now show a changelog for new releases rather than a small blurb.
• Local’s release notes now live at https://localwp.com/releases/ making them easier to search and view.
• Improved the update experience for Linux users by linking to the latest version download.

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where Local would let users pull without selecting an environment
• Fixed issue for FW Pro subscribers that prevented them from using Pro features
• Fixed the issue preventing users from creating sites from Blueprints without WordPress
• Addressed coalition errors when pushing to WPE caused by different MySQL versions
• Fixed UI regressions introduced in Local Beta 5.7.3

What’s New in Local 5.7.2

Improvements

• We’ve added the option for users to set a default web browser from Local › Preferences.
• The auto-updater will now show a changelog for new releases rather than a small blurb. Be on the lookout for this when the next update after 5.7.2 is released!

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue where every time Local would check if a database is online, it would be logged to Local’s log file. This should help reduce red herrings when reviewing Local logs.
• Fixed UI bug with Link Checker in Dark Mode

What’s New in Local 5.7.1

Instant Reload

With Local Pro, you can now view your CSS changes without needing to constantly hit ‘refresh’! Toggle ‘Instant Reload’ to enable Instant Reload on a per site basis. This will support both Site Domain and Local Host Routing modes.

Instant Reload also works great with Live Links Pro! Preview your changes without refreshing on other physical devices or with remote cloud-based browser testing services such as BrowserStack.

Improvements

• Local now removes default plugins after installing WordPress when creating a new site, importing from .zip, and pulling from host.
• You can now check for updates by using Local’s menu rather than needing to open up the About window
• Added an error banner if a WordPress update fails when using Local’s update button

Bug fixes

• When importing sites with custom environments Local will honor the custom environment configuration.
• Fixed various UI issues when retrieving a site’s current WordPress version or the latest version
• Fixed issue where the WordPress update button would remain in a disabled state when starting it on one site and navigating to another site
• Fixed issue where certain images/CSS would not properly display over Live Links Pro
• Fixed issue with Local’s logger not including all of the pertinent meta data
• Fixed issue where Local would re-add the default themes/plugins in certain situations such as pulling from WP Engine or Flywheel

Bug fixes

• More robust logic for updating and reading remote table prefixes for Connect to WP Engine

Bug fixes

• [Windows] Fixed issue where Pushing and Pulling to WP Engine would fail if SSH/rsync was already installed.
• Fixed issue where Live Links popup would show behind the sidebar

We’ve made it easy for you to see your latest Connect action for your site right in Local!

Push and Pull with Flywheel Staging

Previously, you needed Local Pro to push and pull to Flywheel staging environments. All Flywheel customers can push and pull with staging for FREE.

Improvements

• Ability to hot-swap site services BEFORE starting the site. This will give you visibility into any missing Local Lightning services and the ability to download them before starting the site.
• You can now run WP-CLI DB sub-commands such as wp db clean, wp db cli, etc with Local’s database.
• Purchase Local Pro through Flywheel? Local Hub will now automatically recognize your Flywheel subscriptions. This enables Hub-specific features like Live Links Pro!
• Adds help text clarifying how sleep mode affects Live Links Pro
• Composer is now bundled with Local to make interacting with it simpler when using Open Site Shell

Bug Fixes

• Issue with Connect to WPE not updating the prefix on the remote site.
• Fixed issue where Notes add-on was not displaying
• Fixes on macOS for PHP 5.6.39, PHP 7.3.5 and PHP 7.4.1 are now available. GD has been re-added to PHP 5.6.39 and the dynamic libraries for ImageMagick in PHP 7.4.1 have been updated so brew install-ing dependencies is no longer needed.

Site Shell Improvements

Git Bash on Windows

We’re excited to say that you can now select Git Bash as a terminal when utilizing “Open Site Shell” in Local’s sidebar. (Feature Request)

Composer

Composer is now included with Local out of the box much like WP-CLI. Composer is a package manager for PHP (similar to NPM for Node.js) and can help facilitate installing dependencies, running tests, and more!

Improvements for Connect to WP Engine

• Search/replace runs more reliably
• Before pushing, a backup is created to protect your site
• Importing WP Engine sites throws fewer errors
• MagicSync for WP Engine mtime bug has been fixed

Improvements

• Local Pro and Local for Teams users who purchased through Flywheel now have access to Live Links Pro!
• Minor UI improvements

Bug Fixes

• When downloading PHP versions and web servers on Windows, files such as ._ will now be filtered out to prevent issues when uninstalling Local

New Local Pro Features

Live Links Pro

Live Links is one of Local’s most popular features, and we know it doesn’t always work as promised. Live Links relies on ngrok’s free tier of service which isn’t designed for WordPress sites. WordPress sites make lots of network requests and load lots of media, and ngrok isn’t optimized for this type of usage.

Live Links solves a huge workflow challenge: quickly sharing progress and gathering feedback from your team. We believe in Live Links so much that we took the last 6 months to build a completely new version of Live Links. This took an incredible amount of infrastructure work, the launch of Local Hub, and work in Local.app to bring it all together. Live Links Pro has the following benefits:

• Too many connections: significantly higher connection limits to share Live Links with the whole team across many devices
• 2x faster with 2x requests
• Persistent urls: mysite.localsite.io
• Secure by default: privacy mode + HTTPS

Get Live Links Pro by upgrading at hub.localwp.com.

MagicSync for WP Engine

• MagicSync intelligently recommends which files to push based on whether or not you’ve edited them.
• Visually review and customize what’s being pushed/pulled
• MagicSync supports WP Engine and Flywheel

Local Hub

• Upgrading to Local Pro is easier than ever with a more seamless signup process powered by hub.localwp.com — no Flywheel account required.
• Local Hub powers Live Links Pro and is a foundational technology to new, upcoming Local features

Link Checker

• Quickly scan your site for broken links and fatal PHP errors
• Check Links runs completely offline and doesn’t expose work-in-progress to the internet
• Fix broken links quickly with direct links to edit posts in the WordPress admin dashboard

---

Other Updates

Additions

• If you enable “Show Develop Menu” under Preferences » Advanced, you can now right-click on elements in the UI to inspect them, much like Chrome.

UI Cleanup

• Setting-up SSL for a Local site is easier than ever. We moved the SSL trust button to the Overview tab
• Fixed the site name link target size.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where Add-ons would not remain enabled
• Fixed issue where theme screenshots would 404 over Live Links
• UI fixes concerning Link Checker (Pro feature)
• Resolved various PHP warning/notices when pulling sites from WP Engine or importing DevKit sites
• Made a few changes to how Local Hub is authenticated to resolve issues when authenticating with Safari and sometimes Chrome
• Fixed an issue where Live Links Pro would reconnect when visiting certain pages
• Fixed issue where the save/publish button would not work in Gutenberg over Live Links Pro
• Fixed issue where deselecting all files when using Magic Sync with WP Engine would not work as intended
• Fixed issue for Windows users where PHP 5.6 + Apache as a webserver would result in a ‘no file specified’ error.
• Fixed issue for Windows users where MailHog was not intercepting emails.
• Fixed issue where Search & Replace was not working correctly, resulting in broken links on the site when pushing to Flywheel and WP Engine.
• Live Link MU plugins are now automatically updated when enabling Live Links and automatically deleted when Local is shut down
• Fixed issue where pulling a Flywheel site into a Local site with a different table prefix and the database excluded would cause WordPress to show the installation flow.

New Local Pro Features

Live Links Pro

Live Links is one of Local’s most popular features, and we know it doesn’t always work as promised. Live Links relies on ngrok’s free tier of service which isn’t designed for WordPress sites. WordPress sites make lots of network requests and load lots of media, and ngrok isn’t optimized for this type of usage.

Live Links solves a huge workflow challenge: quickly sharing progress and gathering feedback from your team. We believe in Live Links so much that we took the last 6 months to build a completely new version of Live Links. This took an incredible amount of infrastructure work, the launch of Local Hub, and work in Local.app to bring it all together. Live Links Pro has the following benefits:

• Too many connections: significantly higher connection limits to share Live Links with the whole team across many devices
• 2x faster with 2x requests
• Persistent urls: mysite.localsite.io
• Secure by default: privacy mode + HTTPS

Get Live Links Pro by upgrading at hub.localwp.com.

MagicSync for WP Engine

• MagicSync intelligently recommends which files to push based on whether or not you’ve edited them.
• Visually review and customize what’s being pushed/pulled
• MagicSync supports WP Engine and Flywheel

Local Hub

• Upgrading to Local Pro is easier than ever with a more seamless signup process powered by hub.localwp.com — no Flywheel account required.
• Local Hub powers Live Links Pro and is a foundational technology to new, upcoming Local features

Link Checker

• Quickly scan your site for broken links and fatal PHP errors
• Check Links runs completely offline and doesn’t expose work-in-progress to the internet
• Fix broken links quickly with direct links to edit posts in the WordPress admin dashboard

---

Other Updates

Additions

• If you enable “Show Develop Menu” under Preferences » Advanced, you can now right-click on elements in the UI to inspect them, much like Chrome.

UI Cleanup

• Setting-up SSL for a Local site is easier than ever. We moved the SSL trust button to the Overview tab
• Fixed the site name link target size.

Bug Fixes

• Made a few changes to how Local Hub is authenticated to resolve issues when authenticating with Safari and sometimes Chrome
• Fixed an issue where Live Links Pro would reconnect when visiting certain pages
• Fixed issue where the save/publish button would not work in Gutenberg over Live Links Pro
• Fixed issue where deselecting all files when using Magic Sync with WP Engine would not work as intended
• Fixed issue for Windows users where PHP 5.6 + Apache as a webserver would result in a ‘no file specified’ error.
• Fixed issue for Windows users where MailHog was not intercepting emails.
• Fixed issue where Search & Replace was not working correctly, resulting in broken links on the site when pushing to Flywheel and WP Engine.
• Live Link MU plugins are now automatically updated when enabling Live Links and automatically deleted when Local is shut down
• Fixed issue where pulling a Flywheel site into a Local site with a different table prefix and the database excluded would cause WordPress to show the installation flow.

New Local Pro Features

Live Links Pro

Live Links is one of Local’s most popular features, and we know it doesn’t always work as promised. Live Links relies on ngrok’s free tier of service which isn’t designed for WordPress sites. WordPress sites make lots of network requests and load lots of media, and ngrok isn’t optimized for this type of usage.

Live Links solves a huge workflow challenge: quickly sharing progress and gathering feedback from your team. We believe in Live Links so much that we took the last 6 months to build a completely new version of Live Links. This took an incredible amount of infrastructure work, the launch of Local Hub, and work in Local.app to bring it all together. Live Links Pro has the following benefits:

• Too many connections: significantly higher connection limits to share Live Links with the whole team across many devices
• 2x faster with 2x requests
• Persistent urls: mysite.localsite.io
• Secure by default: privacy mode + HTTPS

Get Live Links Pro by upgrading at hub.localwp.com.

MagicSync for WP Engine

• MagicSync intelligently recommends which files to push based on whether or not you’ve edited them.
• Visually review and customize what’s being pushed/pulled
• MagicSync supports WP Engine and Flywheel

Local Hub

• Upgrading to Local Pro is easier than ever with a more seamless signup process powered by hub.localwp.com — no Flywheel account required.
• Local Hub powers Live Links Pro and is a foundational technology to new, upcoming Local features

Link Checker

• Quickly scan your site for broken links and fatal PHP errors
• Check Links runs completely offline and doesn’t expose work-in-progress to the internet
• Fix broken links quickly with direct links to edit posts in the WordPress admin dashboard

---

Other Updates

Additions

• If you enable “Show Develop Menu” under Preferences » Advanced, you can now right-click on elements in the UI to inspect them, much like Chrome.

UI Cleanup

• Setting-up SSL for a Local site is easier than ever. We moved the SSL trust button to the Overview tab
• Fixed the site name link target size.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue for Windows users where PHP 5.6 + Apache as a webserver would result in a ‘no file specified’ error.
• Fixed issue for Windows users where MailHog was not intercepting emails.
• Fixed issue where Search & Replace was not working correctly, resulting in broken links on the site when pushing to Flywheel and WP Engine.
• Live Link MU plugins are now automatically updated when enabling Live Links and automatically deleted when Local is shut down
• Fixed issue where pulling a Flywheel site into a Local site with a different table prefix and the database excluded would cause WordPress to show the installation flow.

Apache is now available as a web server choice!

Apache is now a web server choice in Local (again)! This was the most upvoted feature on Local Feedback, and we’re thrilled that it’s back.

Known issue: Apache and PHP 5.6 will result in the site showing “No input file specified.” While this limitation may be frustrating, we did not want to hold up the release. In the meantime, you can continue to use PHP 5.6 with NGINX. We hope to have a fix for this soon!

Improved Keyboard Accessibility

You can now navigate various flows in Local such as the Add Site flow entirely with your keyboard. Also, some components like the dropdown are now keyboard friendly, so this can be taken advantage of throughout Local.

Keep an eye out for future accessibility improvements.

Other additions

• Added the ability for Local Hub users to submit help requests in-app
• Added text about the services below “Preferred” environment in New Site flow
• Text and flow improvements regarding Local Hub

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where SSH key generation when logging into Connect to WP Engine would not work
• Fixed issue where pushing to Flywheel with Localhost routing mode would result in broken links on the live site
• Fixed problems with “Cancel” button not working during Pushes and Pulls to Flywheel in some cases
• Fixed issues with local site domain not being replaced with the hosted site domain after pushing to Flywheel or WP Engine
• Addressed UI quirk where the password prompt would show multiple times when importing a site or creating a site from a Blueprint
• Various fixes on Windows after the 5.4.2 release such as the MailHog button not working, database information not showing, and a few other frustrating bugs.
• Fixed issue where search and replace wouldn’t run in some cases after pushing to WP Engine. Bug Report
• Fixed issue where clicking on the show site folder icon on the Site Overview screen would show the site folder in Finder/Explorer rather than opening it

Apache is now available as a web server choice!

Apache is now a web server choice in Local (again)! This was the most upvoted feature on Local Feedback, and we’re thrilled that it’s back.

Known issue: Apache and PHP 5.6 will result in the site showing “No input file specified.” While this limitation may be frustrating, we did not want to hold up the release. In the meantime, you can continue to use PHP 5.6 with NGINX. We hope to have a fix for this soon!

Improved Keyboard Accessibility

You can now navigate various flows in Local such as the Add Site flow entirely with your keyboard. Also, some components like the dropdown are now keyboard friendly, so this can be taken advantage of throughout Local.

Keep an eye out for future accessibility improvements.

Other additions

• Added the ability for Local Hub users to submit help requests in-app
• Added text about the services below “Preferred” environment in New Site flow
• Text and flow improvements regarding Local Hub

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where SSH key generation when logging into Connect to WP Engine would not work
• Fixed issue where pushing to Flywheel with Localhost routing mode would result in broken links on the live site
• Various fixes on Windows after the 5.4.2 release such as the MailHog button not working, database information not showing, and a few other frustrating bugs.
• Fixed issue where search and replace wouldn’t run in some cases after pushing to WP Engine. Bug Report
• Fixed issue where clicking on the show site folder icon on the Site Overview screen would show the site folder in Finder/Explorer rather than opening it

Apache is now available as a web server choice!

Apache is now a web server choice in Local (again)! This was the most upvoted feature on Local Feedback, and we’re thrilled that it’s back.

Known issue: Apache and PHP 5.6 will result in the site showing “No input file specified.” While this limitation may be frustrating, we did not want to hold up the release. In the meantime, you can continue to use PHP 5.6 with NGINX. We hope to have a fix for this soon!

Improved Keyboard Accessibility

You can now navigate various flows in Local such as the Add Site flow entirely with your keyboard. Also, some components like the dropdown are now keyboard friendly, so this can be taken advantage of throughout Local.

Keep an eye out for future accessibility improvements.

Other additions

• Added text about the services below “Preferred” environment in New Site flow
• Text and flow improvements regarding Local Hub

Bug Fixes

• Various fixes on Windows after the 5.4.2 release such as the MailHog button not working, database information not showing, and a few other frustrating bugs.
• Fixed issue where search and replace wouldn’t run in some cases after pushing to WP Engine. Bug Report
• Fixed issue where clicking on the show site folder icon on the Site Overview screen would show the site folder in Finder/Explorer rather than opening it

Additions

• The stepper is back in the Add Site and Import Site flows!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed missing spaces in the UI
• Fixed issue where lingering site services on Windows would prevent Local’s installer from properly completing in some cases. This would then cause Local to not open and require a manual re-installation. (Thread) (Bug Report)
• Fixed issue where Local sites wouldn’t start if the ports were unallocated for services (Thread)

Hot-Swappable PHP is back! 🔥

Need to quickly test a plugin or theme across multiple versions of PHP? Your best friend, hot-swappable PHP is back with support for PHP 5.6, 7.3, and 7.4. (Feature Request)

What about Apache as a web server? It’s coming soon!

Support for Local Hub

Today we’re excited to announce hub.localwp.com—a new way to upgrade to Local Pro. Local Hub provides a speedy checkout process and integrates with Local.app to quickly activate your new subscription.

Local Hub is a foundational technology that will enable us to bring new to Local. More details next month!

Site Cloning is back! 🐑

To clone a site, right-click on it in Local’s sites sidebar and click on “Clone Site”

(Feature Request)

Other Additions

• 64-bit Binaries are now available for PHP on Windows (Feature Request). This should resolve issues where certain WordPress plugins require 64-bit PHP binaries.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issues where auto-updater would be hidden behind the main window

🔎 Filtering is now available in the Connect tab!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed auto-updater window resize issue.
• Fixed typo in UI

Additions

• New alert for users on macOS versions below 10.13 to let the user know their OS is not supported.

Bug Fixes

• Use native checkbox style for TOS to make the checkbox more visible on Windows.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where pulling would get stuck during the finalization step.

Additions

• Return single environment sites in WP Engine Connect sites list.
• New terms of service popup.
• Linux: Add libcap as a dependency for deb and rpm packages.
• Show loading indicator in Connect List Modal for remote site options.

Bug Fixes

• Properly decode/encode MySQL dumps to better support plugins that utilize binary columns in MySQL. This should resolve issues when importing, pulling, or pushing sites that include plugins like Wordfence and WP Google Maps! :tada:
• Resolve issue that caused WP Engine pulls/pushes to terminate early.
• Remove “by Flywheel” throughout codebase.
• Correctly push and pull media instead of excluding for WP Engine.
• Make sure mu-plugins are excluded when pulling from WP Engine.
• Allow pulling from Staging rather than showing “Upgrade to Local Pro” when pulling from the Connect tab in a Teams workspace.
• Windows: Quote filesystem paths to resolve conflicts with Adminer and non-standard account names.
• Do not dump the database when deleting sites to speed up the deletion process and reduce likelihood of errors.

Additions

• Enable database pushing for WP Engine in the stable release.
• Pull all WP Engine sites beyond the first 100.
• Update the “what’s new” modal content, background color, and swap next/learn more buttons.

Bug Fixes

• Handle non-standard table prefixes in WPE Connect.
• Resolve one situation that caused a whitescreen app crash when switching between sites.
• Add localwp.com to the content security policy to prevent issues with loading external icons.

Additions

• Updated what’s new modal to include Local’s newest features including Local Lightning.
• New support tab available to all users.
• Remove “Supports Connect to Flywheel” indicator beneath environment during new site flow.

Bug Fixes

• Make sure database pushing is turned off by default for both WPE and Flywheel.
• Windows: Increase specificity of My Accounts svg to correct size.

🔌 Add-ons are back!

We’re excited to say that the Add-ons Library is back in Local!

As of writing, the Notes Add-on has been updated to work with Local “Lightning” and uses the new @getflywheel/local TypeScript typings.

Check out the GitHub repository to see the source code.

Other Local Add-ons are built right into Local “Lightning” (e.g. symlinks) or will return soon. Check Local Feedback for roadmap updates.

Improvements

• Show error in Electron DevTools if renderer entrypoint of Add-on fails to load
• When Local issues commands to WP-CLI, Local will now suppress PHP notices and warnings. This will improve the reliability of site imports if the imported site is throwing notices/warnings.

Bug Fixes

• Improved regular expression pattern that is used for updating the constants in wp-config.php when importing sites
• Updated security rules to allow Gravatar images to load in Add-on library

Connect to WP Engine

We’re thrilled to share that Local’s Connect feature now supports WP Engine. Pull sites into Local and launch them with a few clicks. Gone are the days of fiddling with (S)FTP or rsync. Log in using your WP Engine API credentials and see all of your sites inside Local. Launch changes faster with Connect to WP Engine.

Note: Including the Database during Push to WP Engine is coming soon!

Custom Environments are back—and PHP 7.4 is here!

We know a lot of you have been waiting anxiously for this one!

You can now select the PHP version or MySQL version when creating/importing sites in Local Lightning.

Available PHP Versions and Databases at the time of writing:

• PHP 5.6.39
• PHP 7.3.5
• PHP 7.4.1 (now with ImageMagick!)
• MySQL 5.7.28
• MySQL 8.0.16
• MariaDB 10.4.10 (Windows only)

Best of all, new PHP versions and Databases can show up without updating Local as we release new versions.

Note: Changing site services after creation is coming soon!

Router Mode

Depending on how your device is set up, you may not be able to bind on ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) due to conflicts with other local web servers.

Or, maybe due to anti-virus policy set by your IT department, you’re unable to edit the hosts file.

In the past, there haven’t been great workarounds for these issues aside from shutting down conflicting services or disabling anti-virus.

Router Mode is a new option under Preferences » Advanced. The default is “Site Domains”, which is how Local has behaved in the past.

The new mode is “localhost,” which disables the need for the routing layer entirely and allows you to connect directly to the web server for a particular site. The primary downside of localhost routing at the moment is that HTTPS/SSL cannot be used alongside localhost routing.

Improved SSL Certificate Trusting System

The SSL certificate trust system has been rewritten and now supports trusting certificates for Firefox on Linux.

TypeScript-powered Add-ons API

Local has had an Add-on API ever since its inception, but it has been tough to track down exactly what is available as an Add-on author.

To make this easier, we have released a new NPM module aptly named @getflywheel/local which provides TypeScript declarations for Local’s API.

For an example of how to utilize @getflywheel/local, be sure to check out getflywheel/local-addon-notes.

More to come on this soon!

Dropping the “Beta” tag

As of Local 5.2.1, Local has officially gone stable!

Future beta versions will be released exclusively under the Local Beta program.

Other Improvements

• Various under-the-hood improvements to accommodate PHP 7.4.1 and ImageMagick
• Disabled WP-CLI self-updates. The WP-CLI version is now directly tied to the version in Local.
• wp-content/debug.log is now excluded when Pushing/Pulling to/from Flywheel
• Remove unused menu items on Linux
• During a site import or pull, SQL import failures no longer cause the entire import/pull to fail as long as at least one SQL file imports successfully.
• Re-add potentially missing database constants/variables to wp-config.php during import

Bug Fixes

• Change Domain should no longer persist when clicking on the “Change Domain” button
• Show error dialog instead of white screen if sent to an invalid React route
• Fixed issue where exports would sometimes fail on Windows
• Various fixes to the Magic Sync viewer available to Local Pro and Local for Teams users
• Fixed issue where frontend errors would sometimes require restarting Local
• Fixed issue with import process where certain characters such as ’ in the path to the SQL file would cause it to fail to import
• Fixed issue where the export site worker would not log to Local’s log file on Windows
• Fixed issue where enter and escape keys wouldn’t work with prompts confirmations
• Various styling fixes throughout the interface

Dependencies

• Updated @getflywheel/local to 5.2.1
• Updated WP-CLI to 2.4.0
• Updated @getflywheel/local-components to 12.1.0
• Updated Electron to 7.1.9

Special Thanks

Thanks to everyone who has tested Local in the Local Beta program! This is the first stable release that has gone through the Local Beta program and we’re delighted with how it went.

Improvements

• Update today to Local Lightning and electrify your workflow!
• New icon to differentiate Local Classic and Local Lightning.

Additions

• Local Pro
  • MagicSync
    • Push/Pull to/from staging and production
    • Preview and choose what will be pushed or pulled
    • Differential syncing—only push/pull files that have changed
  • In-app Support Experience

Improvements

• Local for Teams users can now see sites that their Teams organization is collaborating on in the Team workspace
• Various copy updates in locations such as the Flywheel login screen and Add-on Library

Bug Fixes

• Connect: Resolved error when pushing to a Flywheel site with an older version of WordPress than what the Local site is running.
• Fixed text in staging tooltip

Additions

• Local for Teams!
  • MagicSync
    • Push/Pull to/from staging and production
    • Preview and choose what will be push/pulled
    • Differential syncing—only push/pull files that have changed
  • In-app Support Experience
  • Workspace Switcher

Improvements

• macOS: New downloads of Local on macOS are now distributed in a DMG rather than a zip.
• Connect: There can now be separate incompatibilities for pushing vs. pulling. This means you can pull to an existing Local site where WordPress isn’t installed.
• Connect: Removed overwrite warning text when pulling.
• Connect: Removed account dropdown in the top-right in favor of the new Workspace Switcher in the top of the vertical navigation bar.
• Developer Experience: Local has been converted to TypeScript! While you likely won’t see anything different now that Local is written in another subset of JavaScript, it does mean that the Local team will have a more enjoyable time developing Local :-)

Bug Fixes

• Upon site start, the mysqld.sock and mysql.sock.lock files will be automatically removed in case they are lingering from an improper shutdown. This can help with the database not starting up in some cases.
• Connect: Do not replace the WordPress prefix in columns and KEY’s when pushing to Flywheel
• The updater window wasn’t using Dark Mode if enabled. It now does!
• Added Windows toolbar to updater window.

Security

• The Live Links MU plugin now sends the Cache-Control: private header whenever the Live Link is enabled.

Add-on API Improvements

• Emit siteStarted event when sites are started
• New Filters:
  • FlywheelConnectSites_connectedSites
  • FlywheelConnectSites_availableSites
  • FlywheelConnectSites_incompatibleSites
  • SitesSidebar_sites
• New Content Hooks:
  • FlywheelConnectSites_FlywheelHeader:Before
  • FlywheelConnectSites_TabNav:Before
  • FlywheelConnectSites_TabNav
  • FlywheelConnectSites_FlywheelSitesList:Before
  • FlywheelConnectSites_routes
  • SitesSidebar_SitesSidebarSites:Before
  • SitesSidebar_SitesSidebarSites

Third-party Dependencies

• Update Electron to 4.2.0

• Updated bundled version of WordPress to 5.2

• Updated WP-CLI to 2.2.0

• Updated React to 16.8.6

• Updated @getflywheel/local-components to 8.5.2

Bug Fixes

• macOS: Fixed issue where clicking “Quit & Install” on macOS wouldn’t fully shutdown Local to complete auto-updates.
• Fixed minor bug concerning pushing sites with Connect to Flywheel

Dependencies

• Upgraded Electron to 3.1.1

Bug Fixes

• Re-added Flywheel account dropdown on Connect to Flywheel page
• Fixed IPv6 Loopback switch under Settings » Advanced

Improvements

• Added ability to update add-ons downloaded from the Add-ons tab
• When browsing add-ons, you will now be shown an update prompt if an add-on requires a newer version of Local than what you’re currently running.

Dependencies

• Upgraded @getflywheel/local-components to 6.1.8

Bug Fixes

• Fixed regression with auto-updater “Quit & Install” button.

Additions

• Local now checks for a minimum Local version on Environments. This allows us to add Local version requirements to Environment updates.

Improvements/Changes

• Empty directories are now included in site exports including Pushes to Flywheel
• Bumped minimum VirtualBox version to v5.2.10 for all users
  • Bumped minimum VirtualBox version to v5.2.20 for users running macOS Mojave
• Bumped recommended VirtualBox to v5.2.20

Bug Fixes

• Sites containers are stopped prior to cloning a site to ensure that MySQL and other services are properly shutdown
• VM Shutdown confirmation is now not shown when auto-updating Local or restarting after toggling Add-ons in Preferences » Add-ons
• Fixed issue where sites would say that they’re not compatible with Connect to Flywheel immediately after starting the site
• Improved handling of possible API errors with Connect to Flywheel

Third-party Dependencies

• Bumped Docker/Boot2Docker to v18.06.1-ce
• Bumped VirtualBox to v5.2.20

Additions

• Local now checks for a minimum Local version on Environments. This allows us to add Local version requirements to Environment updates.

Improvements/Changes

• Empty directories are now included in site exports including Pushes to Flywheel
• Bumped minimum VirtualBox version to v5.2.10 for all users
  • Bumped minimum VirtualBox version to v5.2.20 for users running macOS Mojave
• Bumped recommended VirtualBox to v5.2.20

Bug Fixes

• VM Shutdown confirmation is now not shown when auto-updating Local or restarting after toggling Add-ons in Preferences » Add-ons
• Fixed issue where sites would say that they’re not compatible with Connect to Flywheel immediately after starting the site
• Improved handling of possible API errors with Connect to Flywheel

Third-party Dependencies

• Bumped Docker/Boot2Docker to v18.06.1-ce
• Bumped VirtualBox to v5.2.20

Bug Fixes

• macOS: Fixed potential race condition with Faster Docker Volumes which could cause “Connect Refused” errors.
• Windows: Fixed issue where SQL files would not be imported on Windows in some cases
• Fixed SQL import order when importing SQL files from mydumper

Third-party dependencies

• Bumped Electron to v2.0.11

Environments

• Preferred 1.3.2
  • Addressed permissions issue with MySQL when Faster Docker Volumes is disabled

Environments

• Preferred 1.3.1
  • Removed sys schema from MySQL
  • Set disable_functions to a blank value to resolve segmentation faults. See PHP :: Bug #76796 :: Compile-time evaluation of disabled function in opcache (SCCP) causes segfault

Improvements

• Environment upgrades now default to cloning the site before upgrading the Environment
• Switching or upgrading site Environments now creates a zipped SQL backup into a new backups folder next to app and logs

Bug Fixes

• Various SQL import fixes when importing an SQL dump created by mydumper
• Fixed issue where the wrong table prefix would be used when importing a multisite archive

Third-party Dependencies

• Updated bundled version of WordPress to 4.9.8
• Updated VirtualBox to 5.2.18

Environments

• Preferred 1.3.0
  • PHP 7.2.9
  • MySQL 5.7

Additions

• Dark Mode for Local! If you’re on a Mac, Local will automatically switch between Light Mode and Dark Mode depending on your Mac’s settings.
• Appearance & Behavior section in Preferences

Improvements

• Relaxed SQL_MODE when site databases are imported. This increases compatibility with various SQL dump settings.
• Allow Environments to upgrade to the latest version of the bundled version instead of waiting for Environment information from our API

Bug Fixes

• Connect to Flywheel compatibility check now waits for MySQL before checking if WordPress is installed. This should resolve the issue where the checker will say the site doesn’t have WordPress installed.
• Fixed PHP upgrade notice that would errantly show when pushing to a Flywheel site running PHP 7.2
• Fixed issue where the Upgrade Environment button would not work unless you were on the site’s Overview/Setup tab

Third-party Dependencies

• Updated Electron to v2.0.8

Bug Fixes

• Changed compression algorithm in Local setup EXE to zip to resolve anti-virus false positives

Environments

• Custom 1.3.1
  • Fix: Removed dependency on symlinks since they’re disabled by default on Windows
  • Fix: Apache config is now properly generated

Additions

• Added ability to change Local’s logging output with logger.json
• Various add-on API additions and improvements. We’ll release more information on that soon!

Improvements

• Local’s URL/domain search replacer will now replace WP_HOME, WP_SITEURL, and DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE in wp-config.php
• When importing a generic WordPress archive, Local will now choose the shortest path to wp-content in case there are multiple wp-content’s in the archive.
• Various error handling improvements.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a few issues when creating sites from Blueprints including Multisite Blueprints
• The Local Router will now pass X-Forwarded-Proto. This means Live Links will work better with HTTPS!
• Middle-clicking links no longer opens a new instance of Local’s window
• macOS: Addressed very verbose (but benign) errors with simple-plist dependency
• Windows: Fixed major issue where pulling from Flywheel would remove directories such as .git and node_modules
• Windows: Fixed issue where live TLDs (.com, .net, etc) weren’t being replaced upon import

Third-party Dependencies

• Updated VirtualBox to v5.2.14
• Updated Electron to v2.0.5

Additions

• Environment switching! You can now quickly and easily switch between Preferred and Custom
• Added option to change default site TLD/suffix under Preferences » New Site Defaults

Changes

• Delete option is now disabled if site is cloning or exporting
• Removed WP-CLI/Adminer update banner since it was a source of confusion
• Windows: The Windows registry is now used to locate VirtualBox’s install location

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where ~/ would be converted to the current user’s home path in the middle of a path instead of the beginning
• Fixed issue with multiple database prefixes and Connect to Flywheel
• Local Machine will no longer shutdown when relaunching to update
• Fixed issue when setting default web server as Apache

Changes

• Windows: Local by Flywheel Setup and Local by Flywheel are now code signed
• IPv6 Loopback is now disabled by default.

Additions

• Added toggle to IPv6 Loopback under Preferences » Advanced

Security

• Windows: Updated Electron to v1.7.11 to address CVE-2018-1000006

Changes

• Windows: Faster Docker Volumes is now disabled by default and marked as “Experimental”

Additions

• Connect to Flywheel: Added ability to pull from unlinked Local site
• Connect to Flywheel: Added new tab to “Pull” page to pull Flywheel sites into existing Local sites
• Added ability to disable IPv6 loopback with a JSON file.

Third-party Dependencies

• Updated Electron to v1.7.11
• Updated VirtualBox to v5.2.4
• Updated WP-CLI to 1.4.1
• Updated Adminer to 4.4.0

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an error that would show after WordPress 4.9 had been installed saying that the installation failed when it didn’t actually fail.
• Windows: VirtualBox and Node.js should now work properly on Windows system where there are non-ASCII characters in the path to Local.
• Fixed issue with missing flywheel:latest Docker image on site creation
• Fixed pattern used in the change domain functionality. Some domains weren’t changed correctly. They should be now.
• Fixed issue with Preferred environment where index.php would be added to the permalink structure
• Importing: Fixed issue with import flow where the old domain wouldn’t be properly detected in some cases
• Importing: Fixed issues with import flow table prefix detection
• Importing: Fixed issue where wp-content path wouldn’t be detected in some cases
• Connect to Flywheel: .user.ini should now be properly removed when pulling from Flywheel. This will fix any 500s caused by Wordfence after pulling.
• Connect to Flywheel: Archives pulled from Flywheel are now properly removed from the operating system’s temporary directory after the pull is completed.
• Connect to Flywheel: After pushing, flywheel-push.sql is now properly removed
• Blocked ports in WebKit are now blocked from being allocated to site containers

Improvements

• HTTPS self-signed certificate trust check now checks the site’s home and siteurl options in wp_options. Previously it only checked home
• Connect to Flywheel: .node_modules and .git are now preserved when pulling from Flywheel. node_modules is now excluded when pushing to Flywheel.

Bug Fixes

• Various bug fixes with Connect to Flywheel
• Fixed an issue with exporting sites on Windows

Additions

• If a site uses HTTPS but the Local certificate isn’t trusted you will see a banner to easily trust the certificate

Improvements

• Pulling a new site no longer takes up the full window
• Export site ignore option now supports glob patterns

Additions

• macOS: High Sierra is now supported!
• Windows: Faster Docker Volumes is here for Windows! Your sites on Windows should now load noticeably quicker if it’s enabled. You can enable/disable Faster Docker Volumes in Preferences » Advanced.
  • Faster Docker Volumes is disabled by default on Windows and enabled by default on macOS
  • You will see a local-flywheel Windows users for the SMB share. The credentials are completely randomized and the user can be removed at any time by disabling Faster Docker Volumes.

Bug Fixes

• Local now tries to detect if the VM is shutting down instead of getting stuck on “Checking System”. This would commonly happen if you quit Local with 0 sites running and then quickly re-open Local.
• Changed references to vboxmanage to VBoxManage to fix issues on case-sensitive file systems. This will resolve issues of Local not running on Mac’s with case-sensitive file systems.

Bug Fixes

• macOS: Fixed an issue where some imported sites would require rm -rf to be deleted

Improvements

• Some error messages weren’t making their way to Local’s Log.

Third-party Dependencies

• Updated Docker Machine to 0.12.1

Bug Fixes

• macOS: Addressed a problem where WordPress plugin, theme, and core updates would fail when using Faster Docker Volumes (NFS)
• Sentry error reporter would sometimes cause Local to crash. We fixed this!
• The hosts updater is now ran a different way to decrease likelihood that it will fail.
• Fixed an issue where sites would fail to be created or start due to a race condition where Local would sometimes start or create the site container before the Docker network exists.

Additions

• Windows: Improved the way elevated processes are ran. You’ll now see exactly what process is being ran and not just Cmd.exe
• Windows: Fixed an issue where generic archives (including Flywheel backups) would fail to import
• Whenever the hosts file is not writable for any reason, Local will now display an error dialog to notify you that it failed. Also, if it detects an EBUSY error, which is typically caused by firewalls locking the hosts file on Windows, it will explain what happened.

Bug Fixes

• Deleting certain sites, such as cloned sites, caused Local to crash. We’ve fixed this.
• There was an issue where the router would restart prior to site certificates existing. This would cause the router to fail to start thus showing you a “This site can’t be reached” error. This should now be resolved.

Additions

• In some cases, such as a site with a complex wp-config.php file, Local can’t find the database credentials. Now when this happens, instead of the Database tab being blank, we’ll show you what we couldn’t find and in what file we were looking.

Windows only

Bug Fixes

• We fixed some cases where quitting Local on Windows didn’t always shut down the virtual machine running behind the scenes.
• We weren’t accurately detecting if a site was multisite. Now you’ll see an accurate multisite indicator on the Site Setup tab.

Bug Fixes

• If NFS fails to connect, Local will now automatically fall back to VirtualBox Shared Folders for site volumes. This should resolve numerous issues including the Local Machine not starting and certain site 500 errors.

  Additions

• Added toggle for NFS (Faster Docker Volumes) under Preferences » Advanced

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with NFS mounts on macOS. /Volumes is no longer mounted with NFS and is instead mounted with VirtualBox shared folders.
• Fixed a call to an undefined function in the WordPress installer causing it to fail in some cases
• Fixed an issue with the auto-updater where sometimes it won’t properly swap out the app with the new version and relaunch it.

Improvements

• Now you can “Add New Site” and “Import Site” from the App Menu » File on Mac and in the Windows menu button in the top-left.
• We improved text contrast so that links are easier to read.

Bug Fixes

• We fixed an issue with BackupBuddy imports.
• We fixed an issue where warnings and errors on the “Site Info” page would cause parts of the screen to overlap.

New Features

• Local got a new, fresh UI! You’ll notice new fonts and colors, and a step-by-step process to create new sites. You’ll find most features in the same spot. We hope you’re as delighted as we are!
• When creating a new site, you’ll now choose between “Preferred” and “Custom” setups.
  • Preferred is a shortcut to spin up a site that matches the Flywheel production environment locally. Use Preferred for easy migrating to Flywheel via Site Export.
    • At this time, the Preferred setup uses the following components: Web Server: nginx + Varnish, PHP: 5.6.20 + ImageMagick, MySQL 5.6.
    • With a Preferred setup, you can toggle Development Mode on and off to enable and disable Varnish caching.
  • If you select a Custom setup, it will be downloaded the first time you create a Custom site on Local. This setup is very similar to what you have used in previous versions of Local and is backwards-compatible with existing Local sites.
    • To reduce initial download size, the custom environment now only ships with PHP 7.0.3 and MySQL 5.5. Other versions of PHP and MySQL can be downloaded separately.
    • Added Redis, a robust key:value store for WordPress object caching. This is common in VIP setups.
    • Added PhpRedis extension for PHP.
    • Adjusted PHP settings to improve debugging experience with Xdebug and running backups. Specifically increased PHP max_execution_time to 900 seconds, increased PHP max_input_time to -1 (infinite), and increased PHP max_input_vars to 3000.
    • Increased nginx and Apache timeouts to 1800 seconds to further help with long-running processes.
    • Additional PHP versions are available for download when you spin up a new Custom site: 7.1.4 (new!), 5.6.20, 5.5.38 (new!), 5.4.45 (new!), 5.3.29, 5.2.17, 5.2.4.
• To help us resolve issues, a message shows at initial install or upgrade that lets you opt-in to Error Reporting. With this enabled, Local will automatically send errors and warnings back to the team so we can patch things up.
• Now uses MailHog instead of MailCatcher for email testing. MailHog provides enhanced email formatting and takes up less space on your machine. Note that MailHog will only be available on sites created on version 2.0+. Existing sites will still use MailCatcher.

Improvements

• HTTP/2 is now enabled which can greatly improve your site’s performance. Note that to use HTTP/2, you must be accessing the site with HTTPS in the domain.
• Sites now support gzip to more closely mirror your production environment.
• To improve stability, Local now communicates to Docker using the Docker Remote API instead of CLI commands.
• Chrome recently released new security standards. We enhanced our self-signed certificates to meet Chrome’s new SSL requirements (SAN).
• To give more information during the initial install and upgrade of Local, added progress bar to Docker image import process.
• Added notification after Local Machine is finished starting up so you know when your site is ready.
• Site domains can now be any valid hostname so you have a wider choice for the site domain. This includes non-valid TLDs and site domains without a TLD (example: .dev).
• Increased Docker Machine VirtualBox disk size to 120,000M (previously 20,000M) to allow for larger MySQL databases.
• Site Import and Export now excludes the “mysql” meta database, which unnecessarily added data to the MySQL server.
• If you only have one site, then it’ll be auto-selected at launch.
• We made the Site Import process much faster by improving archive analysis.
• On Site Import, if WP_HOME and WP_SITEURL exist in wp-config.php, they’ll be commented out automatically to ensure the local domain takes precedence
• Changing your Site Domain now handles “www.” as well as the normal non-www domain to ensure your site is imported properly if it previously used “www.”
• You used to get a notification every time you changed Settings. That seemed like overkill, so we nixed it!
• More IPs will be tried on initial creation of the Local Docker Machine. This further reduces the likelihood of the Docker Machine creation process from failing during installation.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed various issues with Site Import and Export.
• Fixed an issue in which a Site Import would fail if there was a wp-content folder inside of wp-content (common with Jetpack plugin).
• Add-on installer now checks the version requirements before the add-on is installed. That way, if an add-on isn’t supported for your version of Local, you’ll be warned and the installation is prevented.

Third-Party Dependencies

• Updated Moby (formerly Docker) to v17.05.0-ce
• Updated Docker Machine to v0.11.0
• Updated bundled WordPress version to 4.7.5
• Updated VirtualBox to 5.1.20
• Updated Electron to 1.6.8

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macOS only

Improvements

• Improved our auto-updater to include a link to release notes, a progress bar, and additional information about the download.
• You can now find your Settings under “Preferences…” in the application menu at the top of your desktop
• Vastly improved site performance by utilizing NFS for Docker volumes. You will be asked for your administrative password to enable this.

Windows only

New Features

• An auto-updater was added so moving to the newest version of Local is a breeze! As we did on macOS, we also enhanced the auto-updater to include a link to release notes, a progress bar, and additional information about the download.
• Sites can now live outside of the C:\ drive.

macOS & Windows

New Features

• … Maybe next time?!

Improvements

• Updated WordPress from 4.7 to 4.7.2.
• Added a WordPress version cacher. Now, if you’re spinning up a new site and already have the latest version of WordPress locally, your site will spin up faster!
• When importing a site to an existing folder, you’ll overwrite any existing files. We added a prompt so you have a chance to confirm whether you’re ok wiping those away!
• We polished the Host and Port fields on the site Database tab to make it easier to understand which are local and which are remote.

Bug Fixes

• We worked out some kinks with cloning a site.

Third-Party Dependencies

• Updated Docker to 1.13.0
• Updated Docker Machine to 0.9.0

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Windows

Bug Fixes

• Since we don’t yet support installations outside of C:\Users, we now properly limit site paths to this location.
• Some Local users ran into issues because our virtual machine component (VirtualBox) doesn’t play nice with their virtual machine component (Hyper-V). We’ve added a check at launch that allows you to easily disable Hyper-V so that you can use Local.
• Deleting a site didn’t always fully delete the site’s files. Now it does!