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Getting Started

Getting Started

System requirements

  • macOS 14 Sonoma or later
  • Apple Silicon or Intel — Brewwery is a universal app
  • Homebrew — at /opt/homebrew (Apple Silicon), /usr/local (Intel), or any custom location

Brewwery opens without Homebrew and explains how to install it, but it needs Homebrew to do anything useful. New to Homebrew? Read What is Homebrew? first.

Download

Download the latest version from the website:

Download Brewwery for macOS 

Every release is also attached to GitHub Releases  as Brewwery-<version>.dmg.

Install

  1. Open brewwery.dmg.
  2. Drag Brewwery onto the Applications folder.
  3. Eject the disk image.
  4. Open Brewwery from Applications or Spotlight.

Brewwery is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other Mac app — no right-click workaround or Gatekeeper changes are needed.

First launch

  1. Homebrew detection — Brewwery looks for brew in this order: a custom path you saved in Settings, /opt/homebrew/bin/brew, /usr/local/bin/brew, and finally brew on your PATH.
  2. Dashboard — once Homebrew is found, the Dashboard shows its version, your installed formulae and casks, running services, and pending updates.
  3. Homebrew not found — if no working brew is found, Brewwery shows the paths it checked. Install Homebrew from brew.sh , or set a custom path as described below, then click Refresh data.

Set a custom Homebrew path

If Homebrew lives somewhere unusual:

  1. Open Settings (⌘,).
  2. Enter the full path to the brew executable under Custom Homebrew path.
  3. Click Validate. Brewwery checks that the path is absolute, points to an executable file, and that it answers brew --version.
  4. Click Save. Every Homebrew command, including long-running operations, now uses that path.

Click Reset to go back to automatic detection.

Updates

Brewwery checks for new versions of itself automatically and installs them through Sparkle , the standard update framework for Mac apps. You can turn automatic checks off, opt into pre-release versions, or check right away in Settings → Application updates, or with Brewwery → Check for Updates… in the menu bar.

Application updates are separate from Homebrew: updating Brewwery never touches your packages, and upgrading packages never updates Brewwery.

To update a native 1.x installation to 1.1.1:

  1. Finish any running Homebrew operation and open Brewwery from Applications, not from the mounted DMG.
  2. Open Settings → Application updates → Check for updates now.
  3. Review the release notes, then let Sparkle download, verify, install, and relaunch the app.
  4. Check Settings → About for version 1.1.1.

Settings, Favorites, and History keep their existing locations. Do not delete app data to update. If the update is unavailable, the DMG is the manual fallback: quit Brewwery and replace only the app in Applications.

The older Electron 0.9.x app has no Sparkle updater. Install the native release from the DMG instead; its settings, Favorites, and History use a different format and are not automatically migrated.

Uninstall

Quit Brewwery, then remove the app and its local data:

rm -rf "/Applications/Brewwery.app"
rm -rf "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Brewwery"
defaults delete com.brewwery.app
rm -rf "$HOME/Library/Caches/com.brewwery.app"
rm -rf "$HOME/Library/Saved Application State/com.brewwery.app.savedState"

This removes Brewwery’s settings, history, and favorites. It does not change Homebrew or anything installed with it.

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