Homebrew, the popular package manager for macOS and Linux, just released its big 5.0 update. The new version has faster downloads, improved hardware support, and an important security change for Mac software.
If you've never used it before, Homebrew is the best way to install command-line tools and applications on a Mac , much like you would with APT or DNF on a typical desktop Linux computer. It's also supports Linux systems, though, which can be helpful for packages you want isolated from your primary system or other edge cases.
The first major change in Homebrew 5.0 is parallel downloads are now enabled by default. This allows Homebrew to download multiple packages at once, which is especially great for packages with many dependencies. If you run into problems, it can still be disabled in the settings—the blog post mentioned, "We expect there may be a long-tail of issues, please report them!"
There are also some important changes to operating system support. Homebrew 5.0 introduces official support for the latest macOS 26 Tahoe release , though it already worked on that version. Sometime around September 2026, Homebrew will stop working on macOS Catalina 10.15 and earlier versions. Intel-based Macs will be deprioritized with Tier 3 support, and support for macOS Big Sur 11 and all Intel Macs will be removed around September 2027.
If your Mac is on the support chopping block, it's worth taking a look at MacPorts , which supports older macOS versions than Homebrew. It doesn't have all the same packages available, but it's still much better than compiling everything from source on your own.
On a related note, Homebrew now fully supports 64-bit ARM Linux, on the ARM64 and AArch64 platforms. That's great news for anyone using a Raspberry Pi, ARM mini PC, WSL2 on a Windows ARM PC, or any other modern ARM device with a Linux environment.
There's one other big change worth highlighting: Homebrew will remove all features for circumventing macOS Gatekeeper and other Mac security features. Those are needed for command-line tools that aren't compiled with a valid developer certificate, which is probably many of them, since Apple charges $99/year for that privilege . It's unclear if other workarounds will be available, or if this will result in fewer tools being available for macOS.
You can set up Homebrew with the terminal command on the official website . It currently supports macOS Sonoma 14 or higher on Mac, or any modern Linux distribution on 64-bit x86, 64-bit ARM, or 32-bit x86.
Source: Homebrew
