Utilise the power of Homebrew and cask to install most applications on a macOS machine with a single command from your terminal.

Extending on my basic tutorial on Homebrew – I’ve recently started using Homebrew Cask to install applications on my macOS devices.

What is brew cask?

Homebrew Cask extends Homebrew and brings its elegance, simplicity, and speed to macOS applications and large binaries alike.

Cask website

In simple terms, it enables you to install most applications on a macOS machine with a single terminal command. This makes it super simple to get all your dev tools onto a new machine without visiting multiple websites and running multiple installers.

Why is it useful?

As I mentioned above, you can install multiple applications and tools at once. The installer also adds command line tools (such as atom . in Atom, or code . for Visual Studio Code) to your bash or zsh profile.

If any tool is missing, you can easily contribute to the project on GitHub.

How can I use it?

Search through the available casks:

$ brew cask search

To install a single application:

# Install Google Chrome
$ brew cask install google-chrome

# Install Atom and associated command line tools
$ brew cask install atom

To install multiple applications at once:

# Install all the text editors
$ brew cask install atom visual-studio-code sublime-text

# Install all the browsers
$ brew cask install google-chrome firefox

Uninstall an application:

$ brew cask uninstall google-chrome