Tips and Tricks

Install previous versions of formulae

Some formulae in homebrew/core are made available as versioned formulae using a special naming format, e.g. gcc@9. If the version you’re looking for isn’t available, consider using brew extract.

Quickly remove something from Homebrew’s prefix

brew unlink <formula>

This can be useful if a package can’t build against the version of something you have linked into Homebrew’s prefix.

And of course, you can simply brew link <formula> again afterwards!

Pre-download a file for a formula

Sometimes it’s faster to download a file via means other than the strategies that are available as part of Homebrew. For example, Erlang provides a torrent that’ll let you download at 4–5× compared to the normal HTTP method.

Downloads are saved in the downloads subdirectory of Homebrew’s cache directory (as specified by brew --cache, e.g. ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew) and renamed as <url-hash>--<formula>-<version>. The command brew --cache --build-from-source <formula> will print the expected path of the cached download, so after downloading the file, you can run mv the_tarball "$(brew --cache --build-from-source <formula>)" to relocate it to the cache.

You can also pre-cache the download by using the command brew fetch <formula> which also displays its SHA-256 hash. This can be useful for updating formulae to new versions.

Install stuff without the Xcode CLT

brew sh          # or: eval "$(brew --env)"
gem install ronn # or c-programs

This imports the brew environment into your existing shell; gem will pick up the environment variables and be able to build. As a bonus, brew’s automatically determined optimization flags are set.

Install only a formula’s dependencies (not the formula)

brew install --only-dependencies <formula>

Use the interactive Homebrew shell

$ brew irb
==> Interactive Homebrew Shell
Example commands available with: `brew irb --examples`
brew(main):001> Formulary.factory("ace").methods - Object.methods
=>
[:test,
 :install,
 :valid_platform?,
...
 :debug?,
 :verbose?,
 :quiet?]
 [:install, :test, :test_defined?, :sbin, :pkgshare, :elisp,
brew(main):002>

Hide the beer mug emoji when finishing a build

export HOMEBREW_NO_EMOJI=1

This sets the HOMEBREW_NO_EMOJI environment variable, causing Homebrew to hide all emoji.

The beer emoji can also be replaced with other character(s):

export HOMEBREW_INSTALL_BADGE="☕️ 🐸"

Migrate a Homebrew installation to a new location

Running brew bundle dump will record an installation to a Brewfile and brew bundle install will install from a Brewfile. See brew bundle --help for more details.

Appoint Homebrew Cask to manage a manually-installed app

Run brew install --cask with the --adopt switch:

$ brew install --cask --adopt textmate
==> Downloading https://github.com/textmate/textmate/releases/download/v2.0.23/TextMate_2.0.23.tbz
...
==> Installing Cask textmate
==> Adopting existing App at '/Applications/TextMate.app'
==> Linking Binary 'mate' to '/opt/homebrew/bin/mate'
🍺  textmate was successfully installed!

Define aliases for Homebrew commands

Use brew alias to define custom commands that run other commands in brew or your shell, similar to the alias shell builtin.

# Add aliases
$ brew alias ug='upgrade'
$ brew alias i='install'

# Print all aliases
$ brew alias

# Print one alias
$ brew alias i

# Use your aliases like any other command
$ brew i git

# Remove an alias
$ brew unalias i

# Aliases can include other aliases
$ brew alias show='info'
$ brew alias print='show'
$ brew print git # will run `brew info git`

Note that names of stock Homebrew commands can’t be used as aliases.

All aliased commands are prefixed with brew, unless they start with ! or %:

$ brew alias ug='upgrade'
# `brew ug` → `brew upgrade`

$ brew alias status='!git status'
# `brew status` → `git status`

You may need single quotes to prevent your shell from interpreting !, but % will work for both quote types.

# Use shell expansion to preserve a local variable
$ mygit=/path/to/my/git
$ brew alias git="%$mygit"
# `brew git status` → `/path/to/my/git status`

Aliases can be opened in $EDITOR with the --edit flag.

# Edit alias 'brew foo', creating if necessary
$ brew alias --edit foo
# Create and edit alias 'brew foo'
$ brew alias --edit foo=bar

# This works too
$ brew alias foo --edit
$ brew alias foo=bar --edit

# Open all aliases in $EDITOR
$ brew alias --edit

Editor plugins

Visual Studio Code

Brewfile adds Ruby syntax highlighting for brew bundle’s Brewfiles.
Brew Services is an extension for starting and stopping Homebrew services.

Sublime Text

Homebrew-formula-syntax can be installed with Package Control in Sublime Text 2/3, which adds highlighting for inline patches.

Vim

brew.vim adds highlighting to inline patches in Vim.

Emacs

homebrew-mode provides syntax highlighting for inline patches as well as a number of helper functions for editing formula files.
pcmpl-homebrew provides completion for emacs shell-mode and eshell-mode.

In the macOS Terminal, you can right-click on a command name (like ls or tar) and pop open its manpage in a new window by selecting “Open man Page”.

Terminal needs an extra hint on where to find manpages installed by Homebrew because it doesn’t load normal dotfiles like ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshrc.

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/man.d
echo "MANPATH $(brew --prefix)/share/man" | sudo tee -a /usr/local/etc/man.d/homebrew.man.conf

If you’re using Homebrew on macOS Intel, you should also fix permissions afterwards with:

sudo chown -R "${USER}" /usr/local/etc

Use a caching proxy or mirror for Homebrew bottles

You can configure Homebrew to retrieve bottles from a caching proxy or mirror.

For example, in JFrog’s Artifactory, accessible at https://artifacts.example.com, configure a new “remote” repository with homebrew as the “repository key” and https://ghcr.io as the URL.

Then, set these environment variables for Homebrew to retrieve from the caching proxy.

export HOMEBREW_ARTIFACT_DOMAIN=https://artifacts.example.com/artifactory/homebrew/
export HOMEBREW_ARTIFACT_DOMAIN_NO_FALLBACK=1
export HOMEBREW_DOCKER_REGISTRY_BASIC_AUTH_TOKEN="$(printf 'anonymous:' | base64)"

Load Homebrew from the same dotfiles on different operating systems

Some users may want to use the same shell initialization files on macOS and Linux. Use this to detect the likely Homebrew installation directory and load Homebrew when it’s found. You may need to adapt this to your particular shell or other particulars of your environment.

command -v brew || export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin:/usr/local/bin"
command -v brew && eval "$(brew shellenv)"

Homebrew Documentation