Homebrew calls itself “The missing package manager for macOS”. It really helps to simplify the installation of common tools and software on your Mac.
If you want to easily install command line tools such as cask, htop, wget, nmap, tree or virtually any other familiar unix command line tools, you can do so with a simple command. Homebrew downloads and builds the package for you.
If you spend a lot of time in the terminal environment then you should really see the benefit and value of Hombrew.
Before you can install Homebrew you need to make sure that you are running Mac OS X 10.10 or later and have the Command Line Tools for Xcode installed. This will allow you to build software from source. You can either install this directly from Apple or from the terminal by running this command:
sudo xcode-select --install
Once installed, which may take a few minutes, you can install Homebrew by running this command:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
To confirm the installation was successful and that you are ready to go, run this command:
brew doctor
If you are the type of person who likes to read manuals, give the following command a go:
brew help
To show how simple it is to install something with Homebrew, you just need to use the following syntax:
brew install [package name]
So to install wget, it’s as easy as:
brew install wget
You can search for packages with the following:
brew search [package name]
And to remove a package, it’s:
brew remove [package name]
Homebrew now defaults to sending anonymised behavioural analytics. If you do not want to participate in that for privacy purposes you can run the following command which will opt out of Homebrew analytics:
brew analytics off