FAQ
General
Is Brewwery open source?
Yes. Brewwery is MIT-licensed and developed in public on GitHub . Contributions are welcome.
Is Brewwery free?
Yes, completely free. No paid tiers, no pro features, no subscriptions, no donations logic.
Who makes Brewwery?
Brewwery is made by Made Büro .
How do I contact the team?
Email [email protected].
Security & Privacy
Does it run arbitrary shell commands?
No. All operations go through typed IPC with an explicit allowlist of Homebrew commands. The renderer process never has access to a shell.
Does it collect telemetry?
No. Zero telemetry, no cloud sync, no auth, no paid tiers. Everything is fully local. The desktop app makes no network calls to external servers.
Does it use sudo?
No. Brewwery never uses elevated privileges. All Homebrew commands run as your user.
Can it damage my Homebrew installation?
Brewwery only runs standard Homebrew commands and always requires explicit confirmation before mutating anything.
Platform & Compatibility
What macOS versions are supported?
Brewwery targets recent macOS versions. Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) is the primary platform.
Does it work on Intel Macs?
Apple Silicon is the primary platform today. Intel and Universal builds are planned and coming soon (targeted for v1.1).
Is there a Linux or Windows version?
No. Brewwery is intentionally macOS-only since Homebrew is primarily a macOS package manager.
Is the app signed and notarized?
Not yet — v0.9.0 is a Release Candidate. Unsigned builds may trigger macOS Gatekeeper warnings. Right-click the app and select Open to bypass. Signing is planned for v1.0.
Features
Can it install and uninstall packages?
Yes — with explicit confirmation dialogs and a local operation history for every change. You see live progress output during the operation.
Does it auto-update Homebrew?
No. Brewwery never runs brew update automatically. You must explicitly trigger it from the Updates page with confirmation.
Can I use a custom Homebrew path?
Yes. In Settings, you can validate and save a custom Homebrew executable path. Brewwery validates that it’s an absolute path to an executable that can run brew --version.
Does it support Homebrew taps?
Brewwery lists packages from all taps that Homebrew knows about, but it does not manage tap add/remove operations directly.
Technical
What’s the tech stack?
Electron + React + TypeScript + Vite + Tailwind CSS + Zustand + Rust (napi-rs) + pnpm workspaces.
Why Electron?
Electron provides a mature desktop framework. The Rust native core handles performance-critical Homebrew operations, keeping the app fast.
Why Rust?
Rust handles command execution, JSON parsing, input validation, and path verification. It provides memory safety, speed, and eliminates shell spawning for critical operations.
How is Homebrew 5 compatibility handled?
Homebrew 5 may reject --json=v2 for brew list. Brewwery detects this and falls back to brew list --formula --versions --json or brew list --cask --versions --json.