I install everything through Homebrew. Not “mostly” — everything. This is the hill I’m prepared to die on.

The rule

CLI tools — brew install. Not npm install -g, not curl | bash, not the official “quick start” that’s just a shell script with three redirects and a prayer.

Apps — brew install --cask. Not .dmg files, not the App Store, not dragging things into /Applications like it’s 2007. Even 1Password — cask, not the download from the official site.

Dev runtimes (Node, Python, Ruby, etc.) — not through Homebrew at all. That’s a different problem that needs a different tool.

Why not mix methods

Every exception creates a new category of things you have to remember.

“Is this CLI installed globally via npm or brew?” “Did I get this app from the App Store or a .dmg?” “Which Python am I running right now and why is it not the one I think it is?”

When everything goes through Homebrew, there’s one place to check:

brew list          # everything installed
brew list --cask   # apps only

One command to update everything:

brew upgrade && brew upgrade --cask

One command to remove something cleanly:

brew uninstall <package>
brew uninstall --cask <app>

No leftover files in random directories. No archaeology when something breaks.

Dev runtimes are different

Installing Node or Python via Homebrew globally is asking for trouble. Projects have different requirements. You upgrade the system Python and something breaks in a way that takes three hours to debug because the error message is completely unrelated. Classic.

mise solves this at the project level. A .mise.toml in the repo root declares what the project needs:

[tools]
node = "22"
python = "3.12"

mise installs and activates the right version automatically when you cd into the directory. No global state, no conflicts, no “works on my machine” energy.

For Python specifically I also use uv — for virtualenvs, installing packages, running scripts. Faster than pip and handles the things mise doesn’t cover.

The setup is two lines:

brew install mise
brew install uv

After that, mise and uv handle everything inside projects. Homebrew stays clean.

Brew itself

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

Yes, this is a curl | bash install. The one exception that makes the whole system possible. I’ve made peace with it.

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The end state: one tool that knows about everything on my machine. brew list is the full picture. New machine setup is a Brewfile and some waiting. No mental overhead about where things came from or how to get rid of them.