Homebrew

Homebrew is the missing package manager for macOS (and Linux), originally created by Max Howell in 2009 and now maintained by the Homebrew community with over 40,800 stars as of 2026. Homebrew installs the tools and applications that Apple or Linux distributions do not include by default, using a simple and consistent command-line interface: brew install formula, brew uninstall, brew update, brew upgrade, brew search. Key features include: formula-based package management (over 6,200 formulae in the homebrew-core repository, each describing how to download, compile, and install a package from source or pre-built binary), cask support for installing macOS GUI applications (.app, .dmg) from over 6,500 casks (including Google Chrome, Firefox, VS Code, Docker Desktop, Slack, Spotify), tap system for adding third-party repositories (brew tap user/repo for custom formulae), bottle support (pre-compiled binaries for common architectures: Apple Silicon arm64 and Intel x86_64, dramatically reducing installation time), services management (brew services start/stop/restart for managing background daemons like PostgreSQL, Redis, MySQL, nginx), cellar-based isolation (each formula installs to its own directory under Cellar, then symlinked to /opt/homebrew or /usr/local), dependency resolution with automatic installation of required dependencies, brew cleanup for removing old versions and freeing disk space, and brew bundle for declarative package management via Brewfile. Homebrew is licensed under BSD-2-Clause.