Set AllowOverride all on Apache Servers

Ubuntu Server

In case you are on Ubuntu, edit the file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf (here we have an example of /var/www):

<Directory /var/www/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
</Directory>

and change it to;

<Directory /var/www/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
</Directory>

then,

sudo service apache2 restart

You may need to also do sudo a2enmod rewrite to enable module rewrite.

Centos 7,8 Server

If you have Centos server, edit the file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

And depending on what directory level you want to relax access to, you have to change the directive

AllowOverride None

to

AllowOverride All

So, assuming you want to allow access to files on the /var/www/html directory, you should change the following lines from:

<Directory "/var/www/html">
 AllowOverride None
</Directory>

to

<Directory "/var/www/html">
 AllowOverride All
</Directory>

You may need to also do sudo httpd rewrite to restart the Apache.

How to check if .htaccess is loading:
Make sure .htaccess is working with Allowoverride All – WP Ghost

You can find more situations here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18740419/how-to-set-allowoverride-all