Cask

Homebrew Cask extends Homebrew and brings its elegance, simplicity, and speed to the installation and management of GUI macOS applications such as Atom and Google Chrome.

Getting Started

First ensure you have Homebrew version 0.9.5 or higher:

$ brew --version
0.9.5

Frequently Used Commands

Homebrew-Cask is implemented as a subcommand of Homebrew. All Homebrew-Cask commands begin with brew cask. Homebrew-Cask has its own set of command verbs many of which are similar to Homebrew’s. The most frequently-used commands are:

• install — installs the given Cask

• uninstall — uninstalls the given Cask

• list — lists installed Casks

Searching for Casks

To search for Casks, use brew search. Let’s see if there’s a Cask for Google Chrome:

$ brew search google-chrome
==> Casks
google-chrome
homebrew/cask-versions/google-chrome-beta
homebrew/cask-versions/google-chrome-canary
homebrew/cask-versions/google-chrome-dev

Installing Casks

The command brew cask install accepts one or multiple Cask tokens.

brew cask install google-chrome

Uninstalling Casks

brew cask uninstall google-chrome

This will both uninstall the Cask and remove applications which were moved to /Applications.

Other Commands

• info — displays information about the given Cask

• list — with no args, lists installed Casks; given installed Casks, lists staged files (with --full-name, include tap name)

• fetch — downloads remote application files for the given Cask to the local cache (with --force, re-download even if already cached)

• doctor — checks for configuration issues

• cleanup — cleans up cached downloads (with --outdated, only cleans old downloads)

• home — opens the homepage of the given Cask; or with no arguments, the Homebrew-Cask project page

• zap — try to remove all files associated with a Cask (may include resources shared with other applications)

• outdated - lists all outdated Casks

• upgrade - updates all outdated Casks