How to install Homebrew on Mac, from the Command Line Tools to brew doctorHow to install Homebrew on Mac, from the Command Line Tools to brew doctor

Homebrew is installed on a Mac by pasting one command into Terminal, after which the brew command has to be added to the shell's PATH.

Homebrew is a free, open-source package manager for installing command-line tools such as git, wget, Python and Node, and apps through what it calls casks. Its installation page asks for an Apple silicon Mac running macOS Sequoia 15 or later. The steps below apply to macOS Sequoia 15, macOS Tahoe 26 and macOS 27, all of which use zsh as the default shell, as Apple has done since macOS 10.15. You will need an administrator account and an internet connection.

What do you need before installing Homebrew?

Step 1: Install the Command Line Tools for Xcode

Homebrew needs Git and a compiler, and on a Mac both come from Apple's Command Line Tools package. Open Terminal from Applications, then Utilities, and enter:

xcode-select --install

Apple's developer documentation says a system dialog then appears: click Install, agree to the licence, and click Done when it finishes. The package lands in /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools. If a message says the tools are already installed, skip ahead. If you already have the full Xcode app, you do not need this step at all.

Homebrew's installer will also try to fetch the tools itself through Software Update if they are missing. Installing them first is still worth it: the download is the slowest part, and doing it on its own means a failure there is not mistaken for a Homebrew problem.

Step 2: Run the Homebrew install command

Copy this line from brew.sh, paste it into Terminal and press Return:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

The command runs the script with Bash even though Terminal uses zsh, so there is nothing to change first. The script checks for sudo access and asks for your Mac's login password. Nothing appears on screen as you type it, which is normal. It then lists what it will install, under /opt/homebrew on Apple silicon, and pauses with a prompt to press Return to continue or any other key to stop. Press Return and let it finish.

Step 3: Add Homebrew to your PATH on Apple silicon

This is the step most installs go wrong on. Because Homebrew lives in /opt/homebrew on Apple silicon rather than the old /usr/local, the shell does not find the brew command until you tell it where to look, and Homebrew's documentation says it will not work if this is skipped. The installer ends with a Next steps section listing the exact commands for your setup. For the default zsh shell they are:

echo >> ~/.zprofile

echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv zsh)"' >> ~/.zprofile

eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv zsh)"

The first two lines add Homebrew to your zsh profile so every new Terminal window finds it; the third applies it to the window you have open. If the installer printed slightly different lines, use those, since it writes them for the shell and prefix it detected. If it printed no PATH step at all, it has found an existing entry, and you can move on.

Step 4: Check the install with brew doctor

Open a new Terminal window and run:

• which brew - should answer /opt/homebrew/bin/brew. If it says brew not found, step 3 did not take.
• brew doctor - checks the system for potential problems and lists any it finds. No warnings means you are done.
• brew help - shows the commands, as the installer suggests.

Homebrew's manual describes brew doctor's output as potential problems, and it is worth reading the warnings rather than acting on every one: a message about an unofficial tap or an old file elsewhere on the system does not stop Homebrew working. To try it, brew install wget installs a small tool, and brew update fetches the latest Homebrew and package list.

Can you install Homebrew on an Intel Mac?

Not with the one-line installer any more. The current script stops on any Mac whose processor is not Apple silicon, with the message that Homebrew on macOS is only supported on Apple Silicon processors. Homebrew's support tiers page puts Intel Macs at Tier 3, meaning not supported, says it has stopped building new packages for them, and plans to remove the ability to run Homebrew on Intel in or after September 2027. An Intel Mac that already has Homebrew in /usr/local keeps working until then, with more packages building from source. The timing follows Apple: macOS Tahoe 26 is the last version of macOS any Intel Mac can run.

How to uninstall Homebrew

Homebrew's own uninstaller removes it:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/uninstall.sh)"

Then delete the brew shellenv line from ~/.zprofile.

Our take

Homebrew's installer is one of the better-designed command-line experiences on the Mac. It says what it is about to do, waits for a keypress before doing it, and ends by printing the exact lines you need next. The weak point is that last handover. The single most common failure, brew not found straight after a successful install, happens because the final instruction appears as text in a scrolling Terminal window and is easy to read past as a log. That is a familiar pattern from app design: when the one step a user must do is presented the same way as the output they can ignore, a share of people will ignore it. If brew is not found, the fix is almost always step 3, not a reinstall.

The Command Line Tools sit in the same place. Apple shows the friendliest version of them, a dialog with an Install button, while the Homebrew script prefers the silent route through Software Update. Neither is wrong, but running Apple's step first gives a newcomer something visible that finishes, and turns a long silent wait into two shorter tasks with a clear end each. That is the order APPDOOK recommends to anyone setting up a Mac for the first time.

Intel owners get the less comfortable answer. Homebrew is following Apple out of Intel, and much as Apple took Intel Macs off the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad compatibility lists while both keep working, an existing install carries on for now while a new one is refused. Anyone planning to keep an Intel Mac as a working machine past September 2027 should treat Homebrew as one of the things that will stop updating, and plan the move to Apple silicon around it.