Install Brave Browser with Homebrew

Brave Browser

Part of my dotfiles strategy is to automate most of initial setup in all of my Linux and Unix environments. Although most attention goes towards dedicated and virtual servers, I do explore options for automating my primary macOS workstation – and that’s where Homebrew just keeps on helping.

Install Brave browser in macOS

Yes, the easiest is to download package from the official Brave website. There’s an auto-update functionality there too, to be fair. But regular updates can’t be easily automated. That’s why I think brew install of Brave is a better solution – plus you can update quite a few software packages all at once at regular intervals if you manage them via brew.

IMPORTANT: you will need to remove the previous Brave browser installation, otherwise brew will give you an error:

Remove previous Brave installation before installing with Homebrew

Once that is done, simply run:

$ brew cask install brave-browser

Here is how it will look, only takes a few seconds:

Install Brave browser via brew cask

That’s it! We’ve got the latest version of Brave installed:

Give Brave browser a try – it’s fast and privacy friendly, which is a great combination. Think Brave Ads are coming to Europe and Brave Sync is something that’s constantly being improved between mobile and desktop devices – I keep coming back to this browser to watch its progress.

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How To: Install Docker for Mac

Docker for Mac

Turns out, plenty of native macOS apps can be installed using the brew package manager. Among them is Docker, so I decided to try how it installs and works.

Docker for Mac

The easiest is, of course, just to use the native installer provided by Docker maintaners: you download the Docker.dmg file, install it and end up with an app called Docker Desktop:

Install Docker with brew

But since I wanted to try more automated install, I used brew:

greys@maverick:~ $ brew cask install docker
 ==> Satisfying dependencies
 ==> Downloading https://download.docker.com/mac/stable/37199/Docker.dmg
 Already downloaded: /Users/greys/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/01aa470f5479ce702d59bc8d825681bca704ab964279558efd5a2187b126791c--Docker.dmg
 ==> Verifying SHA-256 checksum for Cask 'docker'.
 ==> Installing Cask docker
 ==> Moving App 'Docker.app' to '/Applications/Docker.app'.
 🍺  docker was successfully installed!
 You have mail in /var/mail/greys

That was it! Overall – great improvement of the steps I would normally take to install Docker.

Upon starting this /Applications/Docker.app for the first time, I got the security prompt:

Docker App Security Prompt

But that’s it – after that Docker worked exactly the same and had the very same versions of all the components:

Docker for Mac

Will be trying my most used software installs using brew, it seems a great way to be downloading/installing software in bulk – should be great for new laptop setup (if/when I get it) – I have been upgrading macOS in-place for the past 5 years or so, and think it will be awesome to someday migrate to a brand new clean macOS setup.

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screenFetch in MacOS

screenFetch – MacOS

Just realised that I haven’t tried running screenFetch on my MacBook, should look pretty cool!

Install screenFetch in MacOS

Just use the Homebrew to install screenFetch:

$ brew install screenfetch

screenFetch error with readlink in MacOS Mojave

There seems to be some inconsistency there, because I get an error when running screenfetch on my MacOS Mojave:

greys@maverick:~ $ screenfetch
 readlink: illegal option -- f
 usage: readlink [-n] [file …]

It’s weird, because manpage for readlink suggests -f option exists and specifies format, but command itself doesn’t seem to support it:

screenFetch in MacOS Mojave

Anyway, syntax error aside, screenfetch on MacOS works and looks beautiful:

screenfetch – MacOS

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