Incredibly, despite what Simon says in this video, NativePHP for Mobile is now free!

https://nativephp.com/blog/nativephp-for-mobile-is-now-free

However, at the same time, some of the native features (geolocation, biometrics, etc) have moved to plugins, which are NOT free. But the core native functionality is.

@christogonus I had a similar issue and faffed for ages before I managed to get it working. It just kept spinning.

For me, I think it was a PHP CLI issue causing it.

I got it working by upgrading to php 8.5 on command line (I use homebrew) , updating composer.json to require php ^8.5, did a composer update and then fixed a couple of constant deprecation in config/database.php in the project (relating to PHP 8.5).

I then did php artisan boost:install again and then it allowed me to start the server in settings.

Of course, it doesn't require PHP 8.5, but this info may help to debug your installation.

Also, you can try running php artisan boost:mcp in your terminal and see if there's any errors or anything else in the output. There shouldn't be. It's just supposed to look like it's hanging and waiting for a connection.

Whilst I can see your error message is different, this may help you or someone else.