Macs tend to be very reliable and make great servers, and now that Apple is phasing out OS X Server, we need to look at alternatives. For serving websites and web development, Macs can run Apache web server, MySQL database engine, along with PHP, Perl, and Python – thus the acronym MAMP for Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

MAMP is the program that installs these programs so you can use your Mac to serve WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or any other system that combines PHP and MySQL with Apache server. It has been available for Mac OS X since 2004.

Since 2004, Macs have moved from OS X 10.4 Tiger to macOS 10.13 High Sierra and from PowerPC processors to Intel CPUs. At the same time, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and the rest have also undergone ongoing development. One of the big questions is, Which version(s) of MAMP will run on my Mac?

The primary purpose of this MAMP FAQ is to answer that question.

Pre-release MAMP

The Internet Archive has the webEdition Software (the developer of MAMP) website archived as of December 7, 2004, when version 1.0a2 was available. This was alpha software, not even beta yet, but it gave people a chance to see where the MAMP project was going. It included:

• Apache 2.0.50
• MySQL 4.0.20
• PHP 4.3.8

MAMP 1.3 (July 7, 2006)

MAMP 1.3 supports Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5. It includes the following programs and libraries:

• Apache Version: 2.0.55
• MySQL Version: 5.0.19
• PHP Version: 4.4.2 & 5.1.4
• eAccelerator: 0.9.5b2
• Zend Optimizer: 2.6.0
• phpMyAdmin 2.7.0-pl2
• SQLite Version: 2.8.16
• SQLiteManager Version: 1.1.3
• Freetype Version: 2.1.9
• t1lib Version: 5.1.0
• curl Version: 7.14.0
• jpeg Version: 6b
• libpng Version: 1.2.5
• gd Version: 2.0.28

MAMP 1.4.1 (November 2006)

MAMP 1.4.1 was the first version to include Intel support, either as a universal binary or in an Intel-only version. This is the last version to support PowerPC Macs.

Version 1.4.1 supports the same OS X versions as  MAMP 1.3 and includes the following programs and libraries.

• Apache Version: 2.0.59
• MySQL Version: 5.0.19
• PHP Version: PHP 4.4.4 & 5.1.6
• eAccelerator: 0.9.5
• Zend Optimizer: 3.0.1
• phpMyAdmin 2.7.0-pl2
• SQLite Version: 2.8.16
• SQLiteManager Version: 1.1.3
• Freetype Version: 2.1.9
• t1lib Version: 5.1.0
• curl Version: 7.14.0
• jpeg Version: 6b
• libpng Version: 1.2.5
• gd Version: 2.0.28

Bugfix: In MAMP 1.4, Apache did not start on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.

MAMP 1.6

With MAMP 1.6, MAMP became a universal binary, supporting both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. It requires OS X 10.4 Tiger or later. It includes:

• Apache 2.0.59
• MySQL 5.0.37
• PHP 5.2.1

MAMP 1.7

unknown

MAMP 2

With the release of MAMP 2, MAMP became available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. It included the following:

• Apache 2.2.17
• MySQL 5.5.9
• PHP 5.2.17, 5.3.5, and 5.3.6
• phpMyAdmin 3.3.9.2
• SQLiteManager 1.2.4

MAMP 3

With version 3, MAMP requires OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard or later and a Mac with a 64-bit CPU, so Core 2 Duo and later are supported, but Core Duo is not. MAMP 3 includes the following:

• Apache
• PHP 5.5.18 and 5.6.2

MAMP 4

The current version of MAMP (Feb. 2018) requires OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite or later and includes the following:

• Apache
• MySQL 5.6.38
• PHP 7.0.26 and 7.1.12
• Cloud (MAMP 4.4 and later)
• Nginx, a web server with reverse proxy support
• Python
• Perl
• Web Start

Further Reading

• MAMP, Wikipedia