The first release of BrewToolbar — a tiny macOS menu bar app that keeps an eye on your Homebrew updates.
It sits next to the clock, shows how many packages are outdated, and gets out of the way. When you want to act, it hands you a real terminal: upgrading packages is something you should watch, not something an app should do behind your back.
What it does
- Shows the number of outdated Homebrew packages in the menu bar
- Lists them with installed → available versions when you click the icon
- Open in Terminal runs
brew updateandbrew outdated --verbose, then leaves you at a prompt - Run brew upgrade runs
brew update && brew upgradein Terminal, so you can watch the output and type your password when a cask needs it - Re-checks automatically every hour, or on demand
English and Italian, following your system language.
Requirements
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
- Homebrew
Install
Download BrewToolbar-1.0.dmg, open it, and drag BrewToolbar to your Applications folder.
The app has no Dock icon and no windows — look for the box icon in the menu bar.
This build is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens without any Gatekeeper warning.
Homebrew is looked up in /opt/homebrew/bin/brew and /usr/local/bin/brew. If yours lives elsewhere, set the path in Settings; leave the field empty to go back to auto-detection.
Why it isn't on the Mac App Store
Every App Store app must run in the App Sandbox, and a sandboxed app cannot execute a binary outside its own bundle. brew is exactly that. Even if it could, child processes inherit the sandbox, so brew upgrade could not write to /opt/homebrew anyway. That is the sandbox working as designed, so BrewToolbar is distributed directly instead.