[marlynm]

No one should use system PHP anyway on macOS, It is an old and insecure version.

I would recommend installing PHP via brew https://github.com/shivammathur/homebrew-php

[saagarjha]

What does this version have over https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formul...?

[marlynm]

Exactly same as core tap for currently supported PHP versions i.e. 7.3 to 8.0. Builds with security patches backported for PHP 5.6 to 7.2.