Erwin Bierens

Knowledge is Power

Update Homebrew on MacOS

2022-07-06 2 min read MacOS

Updating Homebrew and your installed packages? Homebrew is a popular package manager for Mac that easily allows users to install and manage command line tools, apps, and utilities, typically familiar with the Linux and Unix world. Because it’s a package manager, you won’t need to manually build anything from source. So let’s cover the update process for homebrew and it’s packages.

For those who are not familiar with Homebrew check the page Link

Installation

the installation is very simple, Paste belows code in a macOS Terminal or Linux shell prompt.

    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Updating

Updating Homebrew is pretty simple, open a macOS terminal or Linux shell prompt and type:

    brew update

This command will update the homebrew app and will list all programs that you have installed but have newer versions available.

Brew Update

Now we can upgrade all listed packages

    brew upgrade

Brew Upgrade

Prevent Updating of Specific Homebrew formulae

If you want to avoid updating certain formulae you can use the following brew command to keep the version at present version:

    brew pin [name]

And of course you can also unpin the formulae to have it be updated again:

    brew unpin [formula]

List all installed packages

If you want to check what packages you have installed with homebrew you can use the following command.

    brew list

Brew List

So, what are you using for packages installed by homebrew? Let me know in the comments..

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