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USAGE.md

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How to Use

Getting Started

First ensure you have Homebrew version '0.9' or higher:

$ brew --version
0.9.3

Tap this repository and install the brew-cask tool:

$ brew tap phinze/homebrew-cask
$ brew install brew-cask

Additional Taps (optional)

The primary tap includes most of the Casks that a normal user will be interested in. There are a few additional Taps where we store different kinds of Casks.

tap name description
caskroom/versions contains alternate versions of Casks (e.g. betas, nightly releases, old versions)
caskroom/fonts contains casks that install fonts, which are kept separate so we can educate users about the different licensing landscape around font installation/usage

You can tap any of the above with a command like this:

$ brew tap (tap name)

Once that command completes, you should see the list of Casks in the tap alongside the Casks in the main repo. You use the same commands to interact with these additional Casks, and brew update will automatically update all Taps.

Searching for Casks

Let's see if there's a Cask for Chrome:

$ brew cask search chrome
google-chrome

Listing all available Casks can be done with a search command with no search term:

$ brew cask search
# list of all available casks

Installing Casks

$ brew cask install google-chrome
==> Downloading https://dl.google.com/chrome/mac/stable/GGRO/googlechrome.dmg
==> Success! google-chrome installed to /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom/google-chrome/stable-channel
==> Linking Google Chrome.app to /Users/paulh/Applications/Google Chrome.app

Inspecting Installed Casks

List all installed Casks

$ brew cask list
adium          google-chrome     one-password

Details about a single Cask:

$ brew cask info caffeine
caffeine: 1.1.1
http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/
Not installed
https://github.com/phinze/homebrew-cask/commits/master/Casks/caffeine.rb

Updating/Upgrading Casks

Since this repository is a Tap, you'll pull down the latest Casks with a simple brew update. When the brew-cask tool itself is updated, it will show in brew outdated and you can upgrade it via the normal Homebrew workflow.

Uninstalling Casks

Easy peasy:

brew cask uninstall google-chrome

This will both uninstall and unlink the Cask.

Options

You can provide a number of options to the brew cask command to modify the default installation locations.

  • --caskroom=/my/path determines where the actual applications will be located. Default is /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom
  • --appdir=/my/path changes the path where the symlinks to the applications (above) will be generated. This is commonly used to create the links in the root Applications directory instead of the home Applications directory by specifying --appdir=/Applications. Default is ~/Applications.
  • --prefpanedir=/my/path changes the path for PreferencePane symlinks. Default is ~/Library/PreferencePanes
  • --qlplugindir=/my/path changes the path for Quicklook Plugin symlinks. Default is ~/Library/QuickLook
  • --widgetdir=/my/path changes the path for Dashboard Widget symlinks. Default is ~/Library/Widgets
  • --fontdir=/my/path changes the path for Fonts symlinks. Default is ~/Library/Fonts

To make these changes permanent, you might want to add the following line to your .bash_profile or .zshenv:

# Specify your defaults in this environment variable
export HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS="--appdir=/Applications --caskroom=/etc/Caskroom"

Note that you still can override the environment variable HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS by explicitly providing the options in the command line:

# Will force the Chrome app to be linked to ~/Applications
# even though HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS specified /Applications
$ brew cask install --appdir="~/Applications" google-chrome

Taps

You can add Casks to your existing (or new) taps: just create a directory named Casks inside your tap, put your Casks there, and everything will just work.

Alfred Integration

I've been using Casks along with Alfred to great effect. Just add /opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom as a Search Scope in Alfred's preferences or manage the scope addition via brew cask alfred. Then applications become available in Alfred immediately after a brew cask install. Your fingertips will thank you.

Oh, and you can brew cask install alfred too! Not bad, eh?