Unable to send email via gmail using php mailer. no error's received just a blank page

Question

ive been trying to send email via gmail the last couple days for my project. Attempting to build a password reset system with xampp and phpmailer for gmail. Within my data base the sql request is identified but sending off the email is where i am stuck.

  <?php
    include 'databaseconnection.php';
    
    use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
    use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\SMTP;
    use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
    
    //Load Composer's autoloader
    require 'vendor/autoload.php';
    
    
    // Output message
    $msg = '';
    // Now we check if the data from the login form was submitted, isset() will check if the data exists.
    if (isset($_POST['email'])) {
        // Prepare our SQL, preparing the SQL statement will prevent SQL injection.
        $stmt = $con->prepare('SELECT * FROM accounts WHERE email = ?');
        $stmt->bind_param('s', $_POST['email']);
        $stmt->execute();
        $stmt->store_result();
        // Check if the email exists...
        if ($stmt->num_rows > 0) {
            $stmt->close();
        
            // Update the reset code in the database
            $uniqid = uniqid();
            $stmt = $con->prepare('UPDATE accounts SET reset = ? WHERE email = ?');
            $stmt->bind_param('ss', $uniqid, $_POST['email']);
            $stmt->execute();
            $stmt->close();
    
            // Send email to the user
            $mail = new PHPMailer(true);
    
            try {
                //Server settings
                $mail->SMTPDebug = SMTP::DEBUG_SERVER;                      //Enable verbose debug output
                $mail->isSMTP();                                            //Send using SMTP
                $mail->Host       = 'smtp.gmail.com';                     //Set the SMTP server to send through
                $mail->SMTPAuth   = true;                                   //Enable SMTP authentication
                $mail->Username   = 'xxx@gmail.com';                     //SMTP username
                $mail->Password   = 'xxxx';                               //SMTP password
                $mail->SMTPSecure = PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_STARTTLS;         //Enable TLS encryption; `PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_SMTPS` encouraged
                $mail->Port       = 587;                                    //TCP port to connect to, use 465 for `PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_SMTPS` above
            
                //Recipients
                $mail->setFrom('xxx@gmail.com', 'Mailer');
                $mail->addAddress('xxx@gmail.com');     //Add a recipient
            
    
                //Content
                $mail->isHTML(true);                                  //Set email format to HTML
                $mail->Subject = 'Here is the subject';
                $mail->Body    = 'This is the HTML message body <b>in bold!</b>';
                $mail->AltBody = 'This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients';
            
                $mail->send();
                echo 'Message has been sent';
            } catch (Exception $e) {
                echo "Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: {$mail->ErrorInfo}";
            }
    } }
?>

so when the code is submitted, i am unable to receive an email with no error messages only left with just a blank page. can anyone identify what i've done wrong??