Housekeeping for Homebrew · Mac Install Guidehttps://mac.install.guide/homebrew/8
Housekeeping for Homebrew
Here's how to keep Homebrew up to date and reduce disk usage.
Homebrew makes it easy to install programming languages and command-line utilities, so you may accumulate a disk full of tried-once and forgotten software. Make Homebrew housecleaning a regular habit to reduce clutter.
With the release of Homebrew 2.0.0 in February 2019, Homebrew began removing old packages automatically after running brew upgrade
. It also runs brew cleanup
every thirty days to remove packages that are no longer current. Expert users can disable automatic brew cleanup
by setting an environment variable HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP=1
in the shell. Homebrew tries to keep your disk tidy but it is easy to accumulate packages you no longer need as well as recently outdated packages.
If you want to remove Homebrew entirely, see Uninstall Homebrew.
Before you get started
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Brew list
Use brew list
to see all the packages in your local environment.
$ brew list
It will show dependencies as well as packages you've installed.
See Uninstall a Homebrew Package if you want to remove any packages you no longer use.
Brew outdated
The command brew outdated
will list all installed packages that have a newer version available.
$ brew outdated
After running brew outdated
, you can run brew upgrade
to upgrade all packages or brew upgrade <package>
to upgrade a specific package.
Brew upgrade (all packages)
The command brew upgrade
will upgrade all installed packages.
$ brew upgrade
Be prepared for this command to take time (many minutes). Older versions of Homebrew had a brew upgrade --all
option but the command has been simplified.
If you don't have time to upgrade all outdated packages, you can upgrade a specific package with brew upgrade <package>
.
Brew update
The command brew update
is for updating Homebrew itself, as well as the Homebrew core packages that are installed by default.
$ brew update
This updates Homebrew itself. It can take many minutes to run an update.
Homebrew core packages are updated as often as every day, so it is likely you will see updates.
Brew autoremove
The command brew autoremove
will remove all unused dependencies remaining in the environment. If you've removed packages, it is likely that abandoned dependencies were left on disk if you didn't run brew autoremove
immediately.
$ brew autoremove
Brew cleanup
Homebrew maintains a cache of downloaded packages so repeated installation goes faster. The command brew cleanup
will remove outdated download files from the cache, as well as old versions of installed packages. By default, brew cleanup
only removes files more than 120 days old. Force a more recent cleanup with --prune=all
.
Unless the default has been changed by the user, the cached files are in ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew
.
Run brew cleanup -n
or brew cleanup --dry-run
to see what will be removed without actually removing anything.
$ brew cleanup --prune=all --dry-run
If you like what you see, run brew cleanup
without the --dry-run
option.
$ brew cleanup --prune=all
Run brew cleanup
after running brew upgrade
to make sure old versions of packages have been removed.
That's Homebrew housekeeping! As a side effect of cleaning up after using Homebrew, you'll have a better understanding of how Homebrew works.
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