# Running Services
Source: https://www.jetify.com/docs/docs/devbox/guides/services/index

When working on an application, you often want some services or dependencies running in the background for testing. Take a web app as an example. While working on your application, you will want to test it against a running development server and database. Previously developers would manage these services via tools like Docker Compose or orchestrating them manually.

With Devbox, you can manage these services from the CLI using `devbox services`. Devbox uses
[process-compose](https://github.com/F1bonacc1/process-compose#-launcher) under the hood to start
and manage your project's services.

## Starting your Services[​](#starting-your-services "Direct link to Starting your Services")

You can start all the services in your project by running `devbox services up`. This will start
process-compose in the foreground, and start all the services associated with your project:

<img alt="Process Compose running in the foreground" />

You can also start a specific service by passing the name as an argument. For example, to start just
`postgresql`, you can run `devbox services up postgresql`

If you want to restart your services (for example, after changing your configuration), you can run
`devbox services restart`

## Starting your Services in the Background[​](#starting-your-services-in-the-background "Direct link to Starting your Services in the Background")

If you want to start your services in the background, without launching the process-compose TUI, you
can use the `-b` flag. For example, to start all services in the background, you can run
`devbox services up -b`.

Services started in the background will continue running, even if the current shell is closed. To
stop your backgrounded services, run `devbox services stop`.

To see the current state of your running services, you can run `devbox services ls`.

You can also attach the process-compose TUI to your running background services by running
`devbox services attach`.

## Defining your Own Services[​](#defining-your-own-services "Direct link to Defining your Own Services")

If you have a process or service that you want to run with your Devbox project, you can define it
using a process-compose.yml in your project's root directory. For example, if you want to run a
Django server, you could add the following yaml:

```yaml theme={null}