With sub tropical temperatures in the Netherlands, I haven’t really found the willpower to hover above my radiating soldering iron last few days. But luckily the mailman delivered something else that could keep me busy while the rest of the country invaded the Dutch beaches. A little bit of home brewing keeps me cold …
After 6 years, my beloved MacBook needed a replacement. Luckily Apple recently announced the upgraded MacBook Pro’s, so this weekend was mainly spent waiting for the mailman, and installing my new MacBook Pro 13".
Usually installing does take some time. And while iCloud helps a lot in syncing your settings and accounts, you still need to do some manually installs. The App Store helps me out a small bit, but unfortunately most of the Apps I use are not available in the App Store. Time for a more nerdish approach!
Meet Homebrew Cask!
Homebrew-Cask extends Homebrew and allows you to install Apps from your command line. If you aren’t familiar with Homebrew: it is the missing package manager for macOS.
Using Homebrew, you can install packages to you mac using one simple terminal command:
brew install node
Now, with Homebrew Cask you can do the same to install full fletched Apps!
brew cask install google-chrome
Of course, this is allready great as it is, but since I’ve reinstalled my iMac a few months ago, I still had an install script available which installs most of my every day apps:
#!/bin/bash
########
# Brew #
########
brew install composer
brew install platformio
brew install wget
brew install youtube-dl
brew install ffmpeg
brew install node
brew install mariadb
brew services start mariadb
########
# Cask #
########
# Development
brew cask install visual-studio-code
brew cask install arduino
brew cask install atom
brew cask install tower
brew cask install github-desktop
brew cask install paw
brew cask install sequel-pro
# Storage
brew cask install dropbox
brew cask install google-drive
# Tools
brew cask install google-chrome
brew cask install 1clipboard
brew cask install grandperspective
brew cask install ibettercharge
brew cask install istat-menus
brew cask install iterm2
brew cask install launchrocket
# Various
brew cask install kicad
brew cask install lulzbot-cura
brew cask install macpass
brew cask install skype
brew cask install whatsapp
# Media
brew cask install vlc
brew cask install mplayerx
brew cask install caption
brew cask install transmission
brew cask install spotify
And with that script, installing the Apps no longer required me to manually download, extract, drag and drop. I could simply spend my time making a delicious Ice Coffee, while my new little Apple friend did the rest …
If you want to tryout Homebrew and Homebrew Cask yourself, you can intall them with the following commands:
Install Homebrew:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Install Homebrew Cask:
brew tap caskroom/cask
Want to see which awesome Apps you can install? Simply run the following terminal command!
brew cask search
Enjoy!
Suggestions for some nice Cask Apps? Leave a comment down below.