How I Stopped Manually Installing Software on Mac (And You Should Too)

Last month, I spent three hours setting up my new MacBook. Download Chrome. Wait. Drag to Applications. Open the DMG. Delete the installer. Download VSCode. Repeat. Download Git. Wait, where's the installer? Google "install git mac." Find a sketchy website. Download. Run installer. Click through 12 screens. Repeat this 15 more times.

By hour three, I was exhausted, my Downloads folder was a mess, and I wasn't even sure which versions I'd installed. Then my developer friend saw what I was doing and laughed. "You're doing it the hard way," he said. "Let me show you something."

That something was Homebrew — and it changed everything about how I manage software on my Mac.

In this guide, I'll show you how to install and use Homebrew to install any software with a single command, keep everything updated automatically, and never manually download another .dmg file again. If you spend more than 5 minutes installing software, this is for you.

The Problem: Why Manual Installation is Broken

Before Homebrew, my software installation workflow looked like this:

For every single application:

1. Google "[app name] download mac"
2. Hope the first result is the official website (not an ad or malware)
3. Navigate to the downloads page
4. Choose the right version (Intel? Apple Silicon? What's the difference?)
5. Wait for the download
6. Open the .dmg or .pkg file
7. Drag the app to Applications (or click through an installer)
8. Eject the disk image
9. Delete the installer from Downloads
10. Remember to check for updates manually later

The real problems: