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Switching from Redis

Horizon itself still assumes a few Redis-specific defaults, independent of which storage driver is active.

Long wait notifications​

config('horizon.waits') keys are formatted "{connection}:{queue}" and default to redis:default. Add an entry keyed with your database queue connection's name (e.g. database:default) if you want accurate "long wait detected" notifications:

// config/horizon.php
'waits' => [
    'database:default' => 60,
],

Supervisor connection​

The published config/horizon.php stub hardcodes 'connection' => 'redis' under defaults.supervisor-1. Change it to your database queue connection's name so your supervisors actually work the right queue:

// config/horizon.php
'environments' => [
    'production' => [
        'supervisor-1' => [
            'connection' => 'database',
            // ...
        ],
    ],
],

A Redis connection block must still exist​

Horizon's own service provider unconditionally calls Horizon::use() on boot, which expects config('database.redis.{connection}') to exist and throws if it's missing — even though this package never touches Redis. Most Laravel apps ship with a default Redis connection block already, so this is rarely an issue in practice, but if your app has removed it entirely, Horizon won't boot regardless of which driver you're using.

Running without the Redis PHP extension​

If your host has no ext-redis at all (not just no Redis server — no client library either), php artisan horizon itself refuses to start:

The PHP Redis extension is not installed.

This check lives in Horizon's own HorizonCommand, not in this package, and it fires based on config('database.redis.client') — independent of whether horizon-db-driver is active. It exits with status 0, not an error code, so process managers (systemd, Supervisor) won't log it as a crash — they'll just see the process exit immediately and, if configured to auto-restart, hit a restart-loop limit (e.g. systemd's start-limit-hit) without an obvious cause in the unit status.

Switch to predis/predis, a pure-PHP Redis client that doesn't need the extension:

composer require predis/predis
REDIS_CLIENT=predis

predis/predis never needs to actually reach a Redis server for HorizonCommand's check to pass — the check only verifies the client library is installed, not that a connection succeeds.