Setting up Rails 8 on macOS

6 January 2026 · Rails · 2 min read

I have written a version of this post for Catalina and again for Monterey, so consider this the 2026 edition - a clean Rails 8 setup on a fresh Mac. The good news is it has never been simpler, because Rails no longer needs Node, Yarn or Webpack out of the box.

The command line tools

First up, Apple’s command line tools:

xcode-select --install

Homebrew, rbenv and Ruby

Install Homebrew if you haven’t already, then:

brew install rbenv ruby-build libyaml

rbenv init

rbenv install 4.0.6
rbenv global 4.0.6

ruby -v

Restart your terminal after rbenv init so the shims get picked up.

PostgreSQL

Rails 8 will happily run SQLite in production these days, but I still reach for Postgres out of habit:

brew install postgresql@17
brew services start postgresql@17

Rails

gem install rails
rbenv rehash
rails -v

A new app

rails new myapp -d postgresql
cd myapp
rails db:create
bin/dev

Head to localhost:3000 and you should be greeted by the Rails welcome page.

That’s the whole setup. No node_modules folder, no Webpack config, no compiling JavaScript for ten minutes. The kids will never know how good they have it.

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