Laravel 8 and Symfony 5.x were heavily utilized on PHP 7.4. While they support PHP 8, many production environments were "frozen" in time using 7.4 for stability. Developing locally in an environment that mirrors production is crucial to avoiding "it works on my machine" syndrome.
: If you see a User Account Control (UAC) warning about restricted permissions, simply click OK and avoid installing to C:\Program Files (the default C:\xampp is recommended). download xampp with php 7.4
Don't worry. You can still download XAMPP with PHP 7.4. Here is the safe way to do it. Laravel 8 and Symfony 5
: Locate your downloaded file (e.g., xampp-windows-x64-7.4.33-0-VC15-installer.exe ) and double-click to start. download xampp with php 7.4