Open Source Package Management Software Homebrew Gains Native Apple Silicon Support

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Popular macOS package management system Homebrew today received a major update, with the 3.0.0 version introducing official support for Apple silicon chips.

homebrew logo

Apple Silicon is now officially supported for installations in /opt/homebrew. formulae.brew.sh formula pages indicate for which platforms bottles (binary packages) are provided and therefore whether they are supported by Homebrew. Homebrew doesn't (yet) provide bottles for all packages on Apple Silicon that we do on Intel x86_64 but we welcome your help in doing so. Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon still provides support for Intel x86_64 in /usr/local.

Homebrew, for those unfamiliar with the software, is a package manager like the Mac App Store. It's designed to let users quickly and easily install, uninstall, and update apps using Terminal.

Prior to now, Homebrew was able to run on M1 Macs through Rosetta 2, but now it works on the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini natively. Homebrew doesn't yet support bottles for all packages on Apple silicon that are available on x86_64, but improvements will be made in the future.

According to Homebrew developer Mike McQuaid, the 3.0.0 development was helped along by MacStadium and Apple, with Apple providing hardware and migration help.

Tags: Apple Silicon Guide, M1 Guide

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Top Rated Comments

aesc80 Avatar
aesc80
63 months ago
Holy crap, yes!!! Now we're getting the good stuff!!! I realize how hard it can be to get tools working on a new platform, so this is definitely appreciated!
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
FishyFish Avatar
FishyFish
63 months ago

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.
Just off the top of my head of things I use every day:

awscli, tldr, htop, ncdu, speedtest-cli, pyenv, pyenv-virtualenv, tmux, nvm, node, redis, yarn, git, tree, unrar, wget, docker, httpie, nginx... I'm sure others as well
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
LeeW Avatar
LeeW
63 months ago

I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.
It is great for developers like me. But yes, not much use for general users.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
aesc80 Avatar
aesc80
63 months ago

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.
It's definitely a developer thing. There's a bunch of tools that can be installed freely with Homebrew without having to manage all the different invocations. The general user can stick to the App Store, or whatever other site that offers their apps.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
EugenesSoggySalami Avatar
EugenesSoggySalami
63 months ago
I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
name99 Avatar
name99
63 months ago

I dont know why but I cant seem to find anything useful in Homebrew, yes I could use youtube-dl but even short videos are like almost a gig.

Do you guys recommend trying out something? I just dont think Homebrew is useful in any way.
Gotta say MacPorts has always been way more useful for my needs.
(As for what I use from MacPorts, the primary functionality is a set of tools like sox and ffmpeg that I use in a script that speeds up audio and video files by some arbitrary factor (while preserving pitch).

The audio speedup is less essential these days in that Apple gives us some degree of flexibility in audio speedup, though still not that many choices. And while I do the audio speedup I fix it up in other useful ways like companding and silence removal.
Apple has never embraced video speedup (after the days of QuickTime as QuickTime; back when I was on the team we definitely supported it even doing backward playback smoothly. My smooth backward MPEG playback remains the only such implementation I have ever seen.) But if you're watching, eg, video lectures, you want speedup for the same reason you want audio speedup!
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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