Brewer
A native Homebrew app for the Mac that turns brew commands into simple
point-and-click actions. Built in SwiftUI. Everything maps directly to real
brew commands, so your setup stays portable, familiar, and fully yours.
🌐 Website: monzdigital.github.io/brewer ·
⬇️ Download the latest release
brew install --cask monzdigital/tap/brewer
Early build, not yet notarized - macOS blocks the first launch, and the first
launch after each update. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll
down, and click "Open Anyway", or clear the quarantine flag in Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Brewer.app
(Homebrew 7 removed the old --no-quarantine install option.)
Brewer and BrewUI. Homebrew 7 ships BrewUI, an official app for browsing
and searching packages on macOS 26 and later. Brewer is built for everything
around the packages - App Store and Sparkle app updates, uninstalls with
leftovers, scheduled upgrades, health and security checks - and runs on
macOS 14 Sonoma and later.
Features
Browse & install
- Search formulae, casks and third-party taps from one search bar (full
user/repo/package paths supported - missing taps can be added automatically)
- Inspect dependencies, license, caveats, disk usage and quarantine status before installing
- One-click install with live command output streamed into the console panel
- Curated Discover catalog with live install counts from formulae.brew.sh
Manage what you have
- Everything installed in one list; filter by formulae, casks, outdated, favorites, pinned
- Multi-select to upgrade, uninstall, pin or favorite in bulk
- Reinstall, link/unlink (keg-only and unlinked formulae are flagged), reveal apps in Finder
- Adopt apps already in /Applications (
brew install --cask --adopt)
- Per-package notes, tags and collections; compact list mode
Stay up to date
- Scheduled update checks (6h/12h/daily/weekly) with notifications that open the right page
- Optional automatic background upgrades - battery-aware (AC power / Low Power Mode)
- Menu bar icon with outdated count at a glance; optional menu-bar-only mode and launch at login
- Running apps are closed cleanly before their cask is upgraded and reopened afterwards
- Snooze updates per package (for a duration, per version, or indefinitely - the cask
equivalent of
brew pin); snoozed packages are never touched by "Upgrade All"
- Optional greedy mode lists and upgrades self-updating casks consistently (
--greedy-auto-updates)
- App Updates: scans Sparkle feeds of installed apps and compares versions the way
Sparkle does (build numbers), skipping betas and releases that need a newer macOS
Services, taps & Brewfiles
- Start / stop / restart
brew services with one click
- Add and remove taps; tap details (formula/cask counts, repo link)
- Tap trust the way Homebrew recommends: trust just the packages you installed from a
tap, or the whole tap after a confirmation (
brew trust)
- Packages from untrusted taps don't silently vanish: Homebrew leaves them out of its
package lists, so Brewer reads their install receipts and points you to Taps
- Export, import and check Brewfiles (
brew bundle)
Keep Homebrew healthy
- Health dashboard: outdated count, deprecated/disabled packages, orphans,
cache size, doctor issues, health score
brew doctor in a readable interface - on Homebrew 7 as structured findings
with affected packages and one-click fixes (brew doctor --json)- Security advisories: scan installed formulae with
brew vulns (OSV.dev),
ranked by severity, with links, fix status and upgrade buttons
- Support-tier notices when Homebrew 7 treats your Mac as Tier 3 (Intel,
Rosetta installs, macOS 14 Sonoma)
- Cleanup preview (
--dry-run) with per-file sizes, one-click cleanup
- Remove quarantine flags from cask apps
- Duplicate detection (multi-version kegs, Homebrew ⟷ App Store overlaps)
All apps, not just Homebrew (MacUpdater / Latest-style)
- Apps inventory: every app on the Mac with install source (Homebrew /
App Store / Sparkle / manual), size and architecture
- Direct Sparkle updates: download → verify (EdDSA signature and code-signing
identity) → back up the old version → extract (zip/dmg/tar) → install, with
release-notes preview, automatic rollback on failure and restore from backups
- Apps inside /Applications subfolders (Setapp, Utilities, vendor folders) are scanned too;
Setapp and App Store editions are left to their own stores, so their licenses never break
- Background checks notify you when app updates appear
Complete uninstaller (AppCleaner-style)
- Drag & drop any app (or drop it on the Dock icon) to remove it together with its
caches, preferences, support files, logs and containers (everything goes to the
Trash - recoverable)
- Homebrew casks are uninstalled through brew, leftovers cleaned after
- SmartDelete: optionally watch your Applications folders and offer leftover
cleanup when you delete an app the normal way (no Full Disk Access needed)
- Safety first: Apple/system apps are protected; name-only matches require review
Extras
- Installation history · dependency tree visualization · Apple Silicon scan
(finds Intel-only apps and Rosetta-installed brew) ·
mas CLI integration
· notifications when long operations finish · bottom-docked live console with
a cancellable queue (Homebrew runs one command at a time) · failed operations
keep their output in History
Requirements
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- Homebrew (auto-detected at
/opt/homebrew or /usr/local;
custom path configurable in Settings)
- To build: Xcode (recommended), or the Command Line Tools with a macOS 26 SDK.
With the macOS 27 SDK, SwiftUI's macros need Xcode's toolchain;
make app
picks a working toolchain automatically (see scripts/toolchain.sh)
Build & run
make app # build release and assemble dist/Brewer.app
make run # build and open the app
make debug # debug build
make icon # regenerate packaging/AppIcon.icns
The result is dist/Brewer.app - copy it to /Applications if you like.
With Xcode installed you can also open Package.swift directly.
For signed, notarized, universal (arm64+x86_64) builds for distribution, see
docs/DISTRIBUTION.md and scripts/release.sh.
(Heads-up: this app class cannot ship on the Mac App Store - the App Sandbox
forbids running brew and managing other apps; Developer ID + notarization is
the supported path, same as Cork/Cakebrew/AppCleaner.)
Website
The landing page is authored in site/ (template + build script) and built
into docs/index.html, which GitHub Pages serves at
monzdigital.github.io/brewer. The
download button points at the latest GitHub release asset.
To refresh the screenshots after UI changes and rebuild the page:
./dist/Brewer.app/Contents/MacOS/Brewer --tour-shots /tmp/shots # captures every page
python3 site/build-site.py /tmp/shots
Verify the data layer
The binary ships with a headless self-test that exercises JSON decoding,
output parsers and scanners against your real Homebrew installation:
.build/release/Brewer --selftest
Architecture
Sources/Brewer/
├── Support/ brew detection, process runner (live output streaming),
│ tolerant JSON models, read-only BrewClient, scanners, utilities
├── Models/ BrewPackage and friends
├── Stores/ @Observable state: packages, console, user metadata,
│ services, taps, health, scans, scheduler
└── Views/ SwiftUI: sidebar navigation, package browser + detail,
discover, updates, maintenance, console, settings
Mutating commands run through a serialized console queue (Homebrew holds a
global lock), stream their output live, and are recorded to history.
Read-only queries (brew info --json=v2, brew outdated, …) run directly
with HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1.
License
Brewer is free software released under the GPL-3.0 license.
