Installation

Instructions for a supported install of Homebrew are on the homepage.

This script installs Homebrew to /usr/local so that you don’t need sudo when you brew install. It is a careful script; it can be run even if you have stuff installed to /usr/local already. It tells you exactly what it will do before it does it too. You have to confirm everything it will do before it starts.

macOS Requirements

• A 64-bit Intel CPU ¹
• macOS High Sierra (10.13) (or higher) ²
• Command Line Tools (CLT) for Xcode: xcode-select --install, developer.apple.com/downloads or Xcode ³
• A Bourne-compatible shell for installation (e.g. bash or zsh) ⁴

Alternative Installs

Linux or Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux

Check out the Homebrew on Linux installation documentation.

Untar anywhere

Just extract (or git clone) Homebrew wherever you want. Just avoid:

• Directories with names that contain spaces. Homebrew itself can handle spaces, but many build scripts cannot.
• /tmp subdirectories because Homebrew gets upset.
• /sw and /opt/local because build scripts get confused when Homebrew is there instead of Fink or MacPorts, respectively.

However do yourself a favour and install to /usr/local on macOS Intel, /opt/homebrew on macOS ARM, and /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew on Linux. Some things may not build when installed elsewhere. One of the reasons Homebrew just works relative to the competition is because we recommend installing here. Pick another prefix at your peril!

mkdir homebrew && curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew

Multiple installations

Create a Homebrew installation wherever you extract the tarball. Whichever brew command is called is where the packages will be installed. You can use this as you see fit, e.g. a system set of libs in /usr/local and tweaked formulae for development in ~/homebrew.

Uninstallation

Uninstallation is documented in the FAQ.

¹ For 32-bit or PPC support see Tigerbrew.

² 10.13 or higher is recommended. 10.9–10.12 are supported on a best-effort basis. For 10.4-10.6 see Tigerbrew.

³ Most formulae require a compiler. A handful require a full Xcode installation. You can install Xcode, the CLT, or both; Homebrew supports all three configurations. Downloading Xcode may require an Apple Developer account on older versions of Mac OS X. Sign up for free here.

⁴ The one-liner installation method found on brew.sh requires a Bourne-compatible shell (e.g. bash or zsh). Notably, fish, tcsh and csh will not work.