There are a few tools that you can use to increase efficiency during Magento development. Let’s step through a few of my favorites.

1. PhpStorm

PhpStorm is a very popular integrated development environment (IDE) for PHP language. I prefer it because it notably speeds up my Magento 2 development, comes with IntelliSense built-in, has access to a variety of plugins including new AI tools to help you write code faster such as GitHub CoPilot, and also has many built-in tools that will increase the quality of your code.

You can familiarize yourself with PhpStorm by checking out the PhpStorm website. Note that if you also enroll in any of my paid offerings, you’ll get a 6-month license of PhpStorm completely free.

2. Magento Plugin for PhpStorm

The Magento PhpStorm plugin adds many Magento-specific functionalities and checks to PhpStorm. It understands the Magento structure, detects Magento modules, helps with XML configurations, and navigates through the many Magento classes that you’ll be writing in your code. It's my favorite plugin for PhpStorm because it’s tailored specifically for Magento development, and since it’s built by Adobe, you can be sure it’ll be supported for many years to come.

3. Xdebug

Xdebug is a PHP extension that helps you debug code on another level. It provides tons of valueable insight into what code is actually doing behind the scenes, and allows you to interactively debug PHP code as your scripts execute.

Nothing beats being able to step through your code, line by line, to see exactly how it's being executed and how data is manipulated. Learn more about it at the official Xdebug website.

4. cache-clean

cache-clean is a must-have for every Magento developer. Built by long-time Magento developer Vinai Kopp, it watches your Magento 2 installation for changes and automatically cleans the affected cache types. This can be a massive time-saver when working on templates, layout XML & other Magento-related files. You can find this tool on GitHub.

5. docker-magento

docker-magento brings the power of containerization to Magento development. Built by yours truly, it offers all the services needed to run a Magento application in isolated Docker containers, all without not needing to know anything about Docker.

docker-magento makes it extremely easy to replicate your entire Magento application stack across teams as well as different environments. It also includes built-in support for PhpStorm, Xdebug, and cache-clean, so you can get right into Magento development right away.

Learn more about my docker-magento project on GitHub. Note that I also have a completely free course at M.academy that walks you through how every step of setting up a new Magento development environment with docker-magento. If you haven’t yet set up your Magento development environment yet, do so now, because we are going to start getting into the Magento code next.