pkgview

A CLI tool that lists all programs installed on your system and shows whether each one is managed by a package manager (brew, npm, pip, cargo, apt, snap, flatpak) or was installed manually — and therefore needs to be maintained by you.

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name                          ┃ Manager        ┃ Version    ┃ Type  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ git                           │ 🍺 brew        │ 2.54.0     │ cli   │
│ k9s                           │ 🍺 brew        │ 0.50.18    │ cli   │
│ firebase-tools                │ 📦 npm         │ 15.8.0     │ cli   │
│ black                         │ 🐍 pip         │ 24.3.0     │ cli   │
│ docker                        │ ⚠  manual      │ –          │ cli   │
│ code                          │ ⚠  manual      │ –          │ cli   │
└───────────────────────────────┴────────────────┴────────────┴───────┘

Total: 75 programs  │  57 managed  │  18 manual

Features

• Detects programs from: brew, brew-cask, npm (global), pip, pipx, cargo, apt, snap, flatpak, conda / mamba, pacman, dnf / yum, apk, nix, gem, composer, winget, scoop, chocolatey, nvm, asdf, pyenv
• Scans /Applications and ~/Applications on macOS for GUI apps
• Marks everything not tracked by a package manager as manual
• Correctly ignores macOS/Linux system binaries (/bin, /usr/bin, etc.)
• Correctly ignores Homebrew sub-binaries (e.g. dart from the flutter cask)
• All detectors run in parallel — fast even with many package managers installed
• Outputs a color-coded table or raw JSON (--json)
• Check for available updates with --outdated
• Export snapshots to JSON or CSV with --export

Requirements

• Python 3.9+ (already present on macOS and most Linux distros)
• No other runtime required

Installation

Recommended – install with pipx (no venv needed)

pipx installs CLI tools in an isolated environment automatically.

# Install pipx once (macOS)
brew install pipx
pipx ensurepath

# Install pkgview directly from GitHub
pipx install git+https://github.com/yourname/pkgview.git

The pkgview command is immediately available system-wide.

Update to the latest version:

pipx upgrade pkgview

Alternative – with pip (once published on PyPI)

pip install pkgview
# or
uv tool install pkgview

For development setup, project structure, and contribution guidelines, see DEVELOPMENT.md.

Usage

pkgview [OPTIONS]

Flag	Short	Default	Description
--filter TEXT	-f	–	Show only programs from one manager. Values: brew, brew-cask, npm, pip, pipx, cargo, apt, snap, flatpak, conda, mamba, pacman, yay, dnf, yum, zypper, apk, nix, gem, composer, winget, scoop, chocolatey, nvm, asdf, pyenv, manual
--sort TEXT	-s	manager	Sort column: name, manager, version
--json	-j	off	Output raw JSON instead of a table
--paths	-p	off	Add a Path column to the table
--outdated	-o	off	Check for available updates; highlight outdated packages in red
--export PATH	-e	–	Save snapshot to file (.csv → CSV, everything else → JSON)
--no-apps	–	off	Exclude GUI apps (/Applications)
--no-manual	–	off	Hide manually installed programs
--version	-V	–	Show version and exit
--help	–	–	Show help and exit

Examples

# List everything, sorted by manager (default)
pkgview

# Show only manually installed programs (needs attention)
pkgview --filter manual

# Show only Homebrew formulas, sorted by name
pkgview --filter brew --sort name

# Show with full paths
pkgview --paths

# Export as JSON (e.g. for backups or scripting)
pkgview --json > programs.json

# Hide noise: no system apps, no manual tools
pkgview --no-apps --no-manual

Supported Package Managers

Icon	Manager	Platform	Detection method
🍺	brew	macOS, Linux	brew list --versions
🍺	brew-cask	macOS	brew list --cask
📦	npm	macOS, Linux	npm list -g --depth=0 --json
🐍	pip	macOS, Linux	pip list --format=json
🐍	pipx	macOS, Linux	pipx list --json
🦀	cargo	macOS, Linux	cargo install --list
🐧	apt	Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)	apt-mark showmanual
🐧	snap	Linux	snap list
🐧	flatpak	Linux	flatpak list --app
🐍	conda / mamba	macOS, Linux	conda list --json / mamba list --json
🐧	pacman	Linux (Arch)	pacman -Qe
🐧	dnf / yum	Linux (Fedora/RHEL)	dnf repoquery --userinstalled
🐧	apk	Linux (Alpine)	apk list --installed
❄	nix	macOS, Linux	nix-env -q
💎	gem	macOS, Linux	gem list --no-verbose
🎵	composer	macOS, Linux	composer global show --format=json
🪟	winget	Windows	winget list --source winget
🪟	scoop	Windows	scoop list
🍫	chocolatey	Windows	choco list --local-only
🟩	nvm	macOS, Linux	scans ~/.nvm/versions/node/
🔧	asdf	macOS, Linux	scans ~/.asdf/installs/
🐍	pyenv	macOS, Linux	scans ~/.pyenv/versions/
⚠	manual	macOS, Linux	PATH scan (cross-referenced)

Missing package managers are silently skipped — no errors.

Roadmap

• pkgview --outdated — highlight packages with available updates
• pkgview --export — save snapshot as JSON/CSV for system backups
• nvm / asdf / pyenv detector
• Windows support (winget, scoop, chocolatey)
• conda / mamba detector
• pacman / dnf / apk / nix / gem / composer detectors
• TUI mode with Textual (pkgview --tui)
• Docker Desktop, VS Code extension detection
• Publish to PyPI — pipx install pkgview without GitHub URL (workflow ready, pending first release)
• Homebrew Tap — brew install yourname/tap/pkgview (formula template in packaging/homebrew/)

License

GPL-3.0-or-later — see LICENSE for details.