Applite – A macOS native GUI for homebrew | Hacker News Reader

Applite – A macOS native GUI for homebrew

aerolite.dev

81 pointsnapolux26 comments

just occurred to me that homebrew is the app store apple should have had... no accounts needed, you don't need to stay on the latest version, in fact install any version you want... just to name a few. wow.

> you don't need to stay on the latest version

Homebrew only provides support for Apple-supported macOS versions though.

I found out the hard way when a brew upgrade on Mojave (the last macOS version to support 32-bit apps) took hours to complete, because it was compiling plenty of stuff from source.

This isn't a complaint. I understand that it doesn't make much sense to provide precompiled binaries for obsolete macOS versions that are likely to have security vulnerabilities.

Hosting content isn't free. It makes good sense for Homebrew to only host pre-built bottles for the configurations that the vast majority of MacOS users are using (and should be, if the machine is ever attached to the public internet).

If you are the kind of user who doesn't fall into this category, it's a feature not a bug that you can still build the catalog from source on your own dime.

For homebrew casks

yeah, you're right :)

Currently, there are over 7500 casks available in Homebrew. A significant part of the value of a GUI such as this to me is as a means of discovery via browsing, and this tool fails at that by not providing a means of browsing the entire catalog, even if that catalog is currently subsetted to cask only.

I'd like to see an "All Casks" category that allows all apps to be browsed rather than just the curated casks appearing in the existing category panes. Presuming that all formulae eventually get supported, then an "All Bottles" category would also make sense.

% brew search --cask '*' | wc -l

7543

Show HN on 10-aug-2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37075730

Two years later and this app is still rather ... lite, eh?

Well, it is open source. Perhaps its primary developers are amenable to major feature PRs.

PSA: Title is misleading. This is not a GUI for homebrew packages.

Did the title get changed? It just says "for homebrew", which seems to be true:

"Any application that can be found in the Homebrew Catalog is available on Applite. Use the search function to find all applications in Applite."

and

"Can I use Applite with my existing Homebrew installation? Yes, you can."

You can try this app and see for yourself that it is a GUI for a relatively unknown and minor part of homebrew and not the for actual homebrew.

I have but I've been trying to figure out what you mean since e.g. Slack (from homebrew) did show for me. Based on this I take it you mean you expected the cli (core) homebrew apps to also show not just gui (casks) ones? I think that's a fair complaint, it just wasn't clear from the PSA.

What are typically the first packages you install on a fresh machine? For me these are libpng, libjpeg, xz, pigz, ccache, ninja, git. None of that is manageable via this app.

From my current mac these show up: Slack, Beeper, 1Password, KeeWeb Teams, Chrome, Firefox, Signal, Zoom, Sublime, iTerm2. I have very little in the way of other apps except the defaults + a few only available on the official App Store. Most all of my 3rd party CLI stuff is in Linux, via iTerm2+built in SSH.

Wait, then what is it? The title says it's a gui for homebrew and that seems to be what it is.

It's a GUI for a minor specific part of homebrew, but not for the packages.

Casks are more than "minor" I'd say, but it wouldn't hurt to spell it out as "a macOS native GUI for managing homebrew casks".

Nice tool, however it would be great if it could display some description and license information and/or whether the app is a trial version that eventually requires a purchase.

Otherwise as a user you end up clicking on the info icon to go to the app home page for every app before installing.

If that is not possible, a direct link to the app home page would save a click and would be highly appreciated.

Homebrew doesn’t provide that information by default so it would have to be manually added for each app. You can open the home page from the little chevron menu.

The "brew info" command provides some information, so it would be great if the tool provided a button to fetch the "brew info" output on demand and if it provided a direct link to the homepage as opposed to having to perform two clicks; a tiny home icon next to the info icon would be good.

Folllows sample output for "brew info mc"

  ==> midnight-commander: stable 4.8.33 (bottled), HEAD
  Terminal-based visual file manager
  https://www.midnight-commander.org/
  Conflicts with:
    minio-mc (because both install an `mc` binary)
  Installed
  /usr/local/Cellar/midnight-commander/4.8.33 (357 files, 7.8MB) \*
    Poured from bottle using the formulae.brew.sh API on 2025-02-03 at 09:30:23
  From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/m/midnight-commander.rb
  License: GPL-3.0-or-later
  ==> Dependencies
  Build: pkgconf 
  Required: glib , libssh2 , openssl@3 , s-lang , diffutils , gettext 
  ==> Options
  --HEAD
   Install HEAD version
  ==> Analytics
  install: 3,043 (30 days), 10,456 (90 days), 65,490 (365 days)
  install-on-request: 3,043 (30 days), 10,451 (90 days), 65,472 (365 days)
  build-error: 0 (30 days)

You can click "Get Info" from the same menu to see this information.

Cool project idea!

Having used Homebrew, I know installations can sometimes hit snags. I'm really curious to see how you've handled error reporting and debugging for users.

> The macOS built-in protection (Gatekeeper and XProtect) will scan the application for potential malware the first time you open it and notify you if anything is suspicious. Also, most applications in the Homebrew Catalog are notarized, which means they come from a registered developer.

Is there any way to request Applite only show notarized casks? I saw notarized casks mentioned in the FAQ, but no mention of a setting for only showing them.

There is no easy way to check which app is notarized, but if an app isn’t it will refuse to open by default. It will show an error saying the app is from an unknown developer. So you’ll know if you have installed an app that’s not notarized.

nice one.

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