The thing underneath

About
Homebrew.

Homebrew is the missing package manager for macOS. It's the thing that makes one shell command turn into “git is now on my computer.” It's been around since 2009, it's MIT-licensed, and it's run by humans, not a company. BREWBUNDLE is just a friendly window onto it.

01What is it

The bit that does the work.

If you've ever wanted to install a tool on your Mac and ended up googling a download link, dragging a thing into Applications, and forgetting where it came from six months later, Homebrew solves that.

You type brew install <name>, it goes off and figures out where to get the thing, downloads it, puts it in the right place, and keeps a record. Want to update everything? brew upgrade. Want to remove something? brew uninstall. That's basically the whole pitch.

It works for command-line tools (formulae) and for full Mac apps (casks). About 12,000 of them, last we checked.

2009

Started

17k+

Contributors

12k+

Packages

MIT

Licence

02The 60-second install

Get it on your machine.

You don't need BREWBUNDLE for any of this. If you've already got brew installed, skip ahead to the catalog.

01

Paste this in your terminal

Open Terminal (or iTerm, or whatever you use). This is the only line Homebrew asks you to run.

Install Homebrewcopy and paste
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
02

Wait for it

It'll ask for your password (it's installing into /opt/homebrew), then do its thing for a minute or two. Now is a good time for coffee.

03

Check it worked

When the install finishes, the last few lines will tell you to add brew to your PATH. Follow those, then run this:

Verifyquick check
brew --version && brew doctor

03Try a few commands

Get the feel of it.

These are the four commands you'll use 95% of the time. Run them in your terminal.

$ brew search <name>

Find a package. Try brew search git or brew search figma.

$ brew install <name>

Install it. Add --caskif it's a full Mac app, not a CLI tool.

$ brew list

See what you've got. All your installed formulae and casks, in one place.

$ brew update && brew upgrade

Keep everything fresh.Refresh the catalog, then upgrade anything that's behind.

04Where BREWBUNDLE fits in

The friendly window.

Once you've got brew installed, you've got everything you need. BREWBUNDLE is just a nicer way to browse the catalog (12,000 packages is a lot to scroll through in your terminal), save bundles (the exact set of tools you want on every new machine), and share install commands(one URL, one paste). That's the whole product.

05The people who built it

Credit where it's due.

BREWBUNDLE doesn't write Homebrew. BREWBUNDLE doesn't maintain Homebrew. BREWBUNDLE isn't affiliated with Homebrew. We're a separate project that uses their public catalog data with respect.

Created by

Max Howell

Started Homebrew in 2009. Still the spiritual parent of the project.

@mxcl on github

Project lead

Mike McQuaid

Runs the project day-to-day. Has been steering it since 2014.

+ the Homebrew PMC

Plus

17,000+ contributors

15+ years of pull requests, formulae, bug reports, and patience.

github.com/Homebrew