The suggested and easiest way to install Homebrew is on the homepage.
The standard 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. And you have to confirm everything it will do before it starts.
- An 64-bit Intel CPU 1
- macOS 10.12 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
Because GitHub now only allows clients that support TLS 1.2 to access repositories over HTTPS, the Homebrew installer will use the Git protocol when run on systems older than OS X Mavericks (10.9). This requires the availability of a git
binary, which can be provided by pre-installing the Command Line Tools for Xcode. Homebrew will also require the Command Line Tools or Xcode in order to automatically compile and install a newer curl
and git
with support for TLS 1.2.
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
. Some things may
not build when installed elsewhere. One of the reasons Homebrew just
works relative to the competition is because we recommend installing
to /usr/local
. Pick another prefix at your peril!
mkdir homebrew && curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew
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 is documented in the FAQ.
1 For 32-bit or PPC support see Tigerbrew.
2 10.12 or higher is recommended. 10.9–10.11 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.