How to Set Up a Local Jekyll Environment on macOS

Installing the command-line tools

Run the following command in the terminal:

xcode-select --install

Installing Jekyll

Local install (recommended)

Run the following command in the terminal:

gem install --user-install bundler jekyll

Creating a site

You can start by creating a test file. Create index.html in any directory, with the following content:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>My First Web Page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Site under construction...</p>
  </body>
</html>

Generating the site and running the server

Use the command:

jekyll serve

This command generates a static site in the directory where it runs and starts a local server, so we can preview the result in a browser.

The local server address is: http://localhost:4000

This command does one more thing: when we modify site files (HTML files, md files, CSS files, and so on), we don’t need to stop the command and run it again — the server detects the change automatically and refreshes.

But if you modify the _config.yml configuration file, you still have to run the command again.