Common questions

Brewwery is a native macOS app that gives Homebrew a graphical interface. Installed formulae and casks, search, updates, taps, services, cleanup, diagnostics, Brewfiles, and a local operation history are all in one window, and every action runs the same brew command you would type in Terminal.

Yes. Brewwery is free and open source under the MIT license. There are no paid tiers, subscriptions, accounts, or upsells, and the full source is on GitHub.

No. Brewwery is an independent open-source project that uses Homebrew. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Homebrew project, and Homebrew itself still performs every package operation.

Yes. Brewwery is an interface for an existing Homebrew installation, so install Homebrew from brew.sh first. Brewwery finds it automatically at /opt/homebrew/bin/brew, /usr/local/bin/brew, or on your PATH, and shows install instructions when it finds nothing.

Any Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Brewwery is a universal app, so it runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and it works with Homebrew in either the /opt/homebrew or /usr/local prefix.

Download the disk image, open it, and drag Brewwery to your Applications folder. Then open it from Applications or Spotlight. The download is about 6 MB, because there is no bundled browser engine or runtime inside the app.

Yes. Brewwery 1.0 is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other Mac app. You do not need to right-click to open it or change any Gatekeeper setting.

Native 1.x releases use Sparkle, which verifies both Apple's code signature and Brewwery's EdDSA signature before installing an update. Open Settings > Application updates > Check for updates now. Finish any running Homebrew operation before installing and relaunching. Settings, Favorites, and History stay in place. You can disable automatic checks or opt into pre-releases in Settings.

Download 1.0 and replace the old app in your Applications folder. The 0.9 builds had no updater, so they cannot update themselves. Your Homebrew installation is untouched, but settings, favorites, and operation history from 0.9 do not carry over, because the native app stores them differently.

Quit Brewwery, move the app to the Trash, then remove its data with `rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Brewwery` and `defaults delete com.brewwery.app`. Homebrew and everything you installed with it stay exactly as they are.

Yes, both formulae and casks. Brewwery shows the exact command and asks for confirmation, streams Homebrew's live output while it runs, lets you cancel, and records the result in History. Very large output is bounded and marked when trimmed.

Yes. The Taps page lists your taps and adds or removes them in owner/repository form after a confirmation. The Services page lists Homebrew services with their status, user, and file, and can start, stop, or restart any of them.

Both use the same Homebrew installation. Avoid running changes in Terminal while Brewwery is installing, upgrading, or changing services: Brewwery's operation guard only covers its own process. After making changes in Terminal, press ⌘R in Brewwery to reload the current page.

Yes. Enter the path to your brew executable in Settings. Brewwery checks that it is an absolute path to an executable file and that it answers `brew --version` before saving it, then uses it for every command.

Yes. It exports your current setup with `brew bundle dump`, reads any Brewfile, and compares it with this Mac: what is already installed, what is missing, and what Brewwery skips. It then installs only the missing taps, formulae, and casks. Brewwery writes its own list of validated names for that, so Homebrew never runs Ruby code from a Brewfile someone sent you.

The progress panel keeps the error visible, and bounded output is saved in History with a marker if it was trimmed. Cancel stops Homebrew's process group, including downloads. Each kind of operation has a safety timeout: 45 minutes for installs and upgrades, 15 for uninstalls, 30 for cleanup, 5 for services. Lists refresh after failure or cancellation because Homebrew may have completed part of the change. Report this failure lets you review a GitHub issue or email before sending it yourself.

No. Brewwery never starts a shell. It runs brew directly from a closed set of typed commands, and every package, cask, tap, or service name is validated against strict character rules before it becomes an argument. There is no way to make Brewwery run something else.

The desktop app has no telemetry, analytics, crash reporting, account, or cloud sync. Settings, Favorites, and History stay on your Mac, and Brewwery sets HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1 for its Homebrew commands. Sparkle checks for and downloads app updates. Links and problem reports open only at your request; you review and send reports yourself. The website has a separate privacy policy.

No. Every command runs as your user, exactly as if you typed it in Terminal. Brewwery has no helper tool, no elevated privileges, and asks for no admin rights.

It only runs standard Homebrew commands, one at a time, and asks before any command that changes something — showing you which command it will run. Cleanup additionally requires a preview first. Nothing happens in the background: update checks only read the list of outdated packages.

Because seeing is faster than remembering. Brewwery shows what is installed, what is outdated, what depends on what, which services run, and what cleanup would free — without composing commands or scrolling output. The Commands page shows the equivalent brew command for anything you want to do in Terminal instead.

Brewwery up to 0.9.7 was an Electron app with a React interface and a Rust core. Version 1.0 is written from scratch in Swift with SwiftUI and AppKit: the same features, a fraction of the download and memory, native scrolling and keyboard behaviour, and signed, notarized, auto-updating builds for Apple Silicon and Intel.

No. Brewwery is a native Mac app built on Apple's frameworks, and there are no plans to port it. Homebrew on Linux works fine from the command line.