How I Use Homebrew on the Mac

Homebrew is a Swiss Army Knife for the Mac. It makes installing and uninstalling applications as easy as a single command. It’s free, and anyone who takes time to understand it will benefit.

To install homebrew visit brew.sh. Under Install Homebrew click the clipboard icon at the end of the line to copy the command. Currently, the command is:

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

Paste and run that command into Terminal. It will ensure the command-line tools from Apple are installed along with the brew utilities. After installation, there are instructions you can copy and paste to add brew to your system PATH. Note that the M-series version of brew installs in /opt/homebrew while the older Intel version installs in /usr/local.

Brew Usage

# Show installed packages
brew list

# Substitute any package name for firefox 
# in the examples below.

# Search for available packages
brew search firefox

# Show more information about a package
brew info firefox

# Install an application
brew install firefox

# Update brew package information
brew update

# Show outdated brew packages
brew outdated

# Upgrade a single package
brew upgrade firefox

# Upgrade all outdated packages
brew upgrade

# Remove old packages after upgrading
brew cleanup

# Installing more than one package
brew install rsync ghostscript firefox

Casks

Homebrew started as a method of managing command-line applications and services ranging from ghostscript to postgresql. Later, the ability to use “casks” was added. A cask is a typical macOS application like 1Password or Firefox.

Using “casks” makes installing and updating these programs a breeze. Instead of browsing to an application’s website, downloading the installer, and then installing the application, brew does all this for you with a single command.

My list of installing packages, one on a line to easier pick and choose. You can install more than one at a time by selecting multiple lines to copy/paste.

My Brew Packages

# My common casks
brew install 1password
brew install visual-studio-code
brew install mongodb-compass
brew install browserstacklocal
brew install moneydance
brew install appcleaner
brew install libreoffice
brew install affinity-designer
brew install affinity-photo
brew install affinity-publisher
brew install daisydisk
brew install dropbox
brew install bbedit
brew install oscar
brew install plex
brew install gitx
brew install vlc

# Browser casks
brew install firefox
brew install brave-browser
brew install vivaldi
brew install opera
brew install orion
brew install homebrew/cask-versions/firefox-developer-edition

# Less used casks
brew install iina
brew install diffmerge
brew install spotify
brew install pdfexpert
brew install scrivener
brew install atext
brew install transmit

# Media casks
brew cask install metaz
brew cask install mp4tools
brew cask install handbrake
brew cask install transmission

# Media command-line tools
brew install ffmpeg
brew install pianobar
brew install yt-dlp
brew install libdvdcss

# Command line tool to show system information
brew install neofetch

# Development tools
brew install rsync
brew install ghostscript
brew install imagemagick
brew install pngquant
brew install libheif
brew install node
brew install yarn
brew install pandoc
brew install tmux

# MongoDB
brew tap mongodb/brew
brew install mongodb-community

Brew Fonts

Homebrew can also install fonts if you “tap” the cask-fonts repository.

# Tap brew fonts
brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts

# Install lato
brew install font-lato

# Install orbitron font
brew install font-orbitron

# Install SF Mono from terminal resources
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Resources/Fonts/

# Install SF Fonts from Apple including SF Mono
brew install font-sf-pro font-sf-mono font-new-york

# Install oswald & dosis font
brew install font-oswald
brew install font-dosis

# Install iA Writer Duo font
brew install homebrew/cask-fonts/font-ia-writer-duo

For more information, refer to the Homebrew Documentation.

A Little History

In the past, developers using the Mac had to install Xcode from Apple. It was and is a comprehensive system for writing native applications for the Mac, but it was pretty large compared to the available drive space available at the time.

Many developers only needed a subset of features provided by Xcode—the command-line tools.

There were other projects to install these base tools. MacPorts, for example, would compile each tool from scratch. It was time-consuming, it duplicated many tools already provided by the OS, and would use almost as much space as Xcode itself.

What Homebrew needed were the little tools that came within Xcode, but not all of XCode. One day a hacker extracted these command-line tools (llvm, git, etc) into a small package that you could download from the Homebrew page. Then you installed homebrew, and your system was ready for development with only a tidy set of tools.

It was every Homebrew user’s nightmare that the Apple corporation would nix such an unbelievably useful project.

It probably came as a big surprise to the Homebrew developers when Apple approached them to make this subset an official release by Apple itself. Apparently, many Apple employees were using Homebrew and the Xcode command-line package.

Today, when you install Homebrew, the Xcode Command-Line Tools application from Apple is automatically installed.