How do I know if homebrew is installed on my Mac?

 I am doing some Rails programming and I consistently see Homebrew referenced in solutions around the web but have never used it.

I also notice Homebrew in the terminal version 2.9 as an option next to "Shell -> New" from the terminal drop down but when I select homebrew and issue commands, they fail.

Usually with the "command not found" error.

Strangely enough I have been unable to locate a simple command to determine whether brew is installed or not.

How do I check to see if Homebrew is already installed on my Mac?

ruby-on-railsmacoshomebrew

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edited Oct 25 '16 at 5:32

IanEdington

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asked Feb 5 '14 at 12:57

Kmb40

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15 Answers

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123

brew help. If brew is there, you get output. If not, you get 'command not found'. If you need to check in a script, you can work out how to redirect output and check $?.

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answered Feb 5 '14 at 13:01

bmargulies

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• 2
  I executed "brew help"and got nothing. I decided to just go ahead with the install and now "brew help" returns results. Thanks. – Kmb40 Feb 5 '14 at 13:35
• 26
  brew -v prints the Homebrew version – Saif Apr 19 '17 at 11:33
• 1
  paste it to your command: /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" – Djama Jun 30 '17 at 15:20 

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60

I use this to perform update or install:

which -s brew
if [[ $? != 0 ]] ; then
    # Install Homebrew
    ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
else
    brew update
fi

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edited Aug 2 '17 at 6:47

answered Dec 21 '15 at 5:23

star18bit

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  Very great solution to installing packages if they're not found! – cakes88 Sep 19 '16 at 14:56

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48

The standard way of figuring out if something is installed is to use which.

If Brew is installed.

>>> which brew
/usr/local/bin/brew

If Brew is not installed.

>>> which brew
brew not found

Note: The "not installed" message depends on your shell. zsh is shown above. bash will just not print anything. csh will say brew: Command not found. In the "installed" case, all shells will print the path.)

It works with all command line programs. Try which grep or which python. Since it tells you the program that you're running, it's helpful when debugging as well.

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edited Mar 11 '17 at 23:12

answered Feb 9 '14 at 5:34

Liyan Chang

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• I am not getting anything when i wrote which brew on my mac machine terminal – Chandni - Systematix Jan 25 '17 at 11:29
• 1
  Depending on which shell you use, you'll get different messages. That's a good clarification! – Liyan Chang Jan 27 '17 at 13:35

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27

While which is the most common way of checking if a program is installed, it will tell you a program is installed ONLY if it's in the $PATH. So if your program is installed, but the $PATH wasn't updated for whatever reason*, which will tell you the program isn't installed.

(*One example scenario is changing from Bash to Zshell and ~/.zshrc not having the old $PATH from ~/.bash_profile)

command -v foo is a better alternative to which foo. command -v brew will output nothing if Homebrew is not installed

command -v brew

Here's a sample script to check if Homebrew is installed, install it if it isn't, update if it is.

if [[ $(command -v brew) == "" ]]; then
    echo "Installing Hombrew"
    /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
else
    echo "Updating Homebrew"
    brew update
fi

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edited Nov 27 '18 at 6:28

answered Oct 29 '17 at 8:50

Aamnah

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• Very useful. Thanks for posting alternative to which and an explanation. – SoEzPz Sep 4 '18 at 17:14

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10

I just type brew -v in terminal if you have it it will respond with the version number installed.

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answered Mar 24 '16 at 2:27

TravisP

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6

brew -v or brew --version does the trick!

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answered Aug 21 '20 at 22:53

Bappy

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  Please don't add "thank you" as an answer. Instead, vote up the answers that you find helpful. - From Review – Mark Rotteveel Aug 22 '20 at 10:01
• It shows cask as well. – manikanta nvsr yesterday

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4

[ ! -f "`which brew`" ] && echo "not installed"

Explaination: If brew is not installed run command after &&

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answered May 30 '16 at 16:48

bits

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3

brew doctor checks if Homebrew is installed and working properly.

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answered Aug 2 '18 at 18:52

Thomas David Kehoe

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2

use either the which or type built-in tools.

i.e.: which brew or type brew

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answered Feb 21 '19 at 19:59

kaiky25

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1

Another one possible way:

# Check if Ninja is installed
if ! which ninja > /dev/null
then
echo 'Ninja installation...'
brew install ninja
fi

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answered Nov 20 '17 at 13:44

Yulia

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1

Once you install Homebrew, type command brew doctor in terminal.

• If you get the following message:

  Your system is ready to brew

  then you are good to go and you have successfully installed homebrew.

• If you get any warnings, you can try fixing it.

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edited Apr 20 '19 at 17:45

Emma

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answered Apr 20 '19 at 14:48

Sunny Singh

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1

In my case Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.6

brew -v

OutPut-
Homebrew 2.2.2
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 71aa; last commit 2020-01-07)
Homebrew/homebrew-cask (git revision 84f00; last commit 2020-01-07)

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answered Jan 20 '20 at 14:31

Ankit Kumar Rajpoot

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0

Running Catalina 10.15.4 I ran the permissions command below to get brew to install

sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local/* && sudo chmod -R g+rwx /usr/local/*

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edited May 23 '20 at 13:30

David Buck

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answered May 23 '20 at 12:32

James Tervit

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Yes you can run which brew, but you may have it installed and it says it is not found if you are using zsh. You will need to add it to your .zshrc file.

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answered May 4 at 20:09

dacey

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I find it simple to use brew help command to find it is installed or not. There was a user guide on the homebrew download page.

If it is not installed then it will show 'command not found'

If you need to install homebrew then paste this on terminal:

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