Changelog

May 8, 2026

A polish release on top of v1.6.6. Package icons are sharper and more accurate thanks to a rebuilt icon pipeline, the categories database has been refreshed (12,402 → 15,976 rows) so more packages land in the right place out of the box, and deprecated packages are now visible by default — no more wondering where a familiar tool went. The license field on the package page also renders with better visual balance.

• Sharper, more accurate package icons through a rebuilt icon pipeline
• Categories database refreshed — 12,402 → 15,976 rows for better out-of-the-box classification
• Deprecated packages now visible by default, so familiar tools don't silently disappear from your lists
• Fixed: license field rendering on the package detail page — better visual balance with the rest of the strip

May 3, 2026

A long-overdue makeover for the Updates page, plus friendlier admin installs. Updates now leads with a prominent Upgrade All, adds per-row Update buttons with a live Upgrading… indicator, and a clean Upgrade Selected action in batch mode. Apps that need administrator access install end-to-end through a friendly password prompt with a clear progress sheet — your password goes straight to the system, never through us. A live activity panel in Settings shows every background job in flight, font casks categorise correctly the first time, and the categories database was rebuilt against the live cask catalog.

• Cleaner Updates page — Upgrade All up front, per-row Update with an inline Upgrading… indicator, Upgrade Selected for batches
• Per-row update affordance extends across Installed, All Packages, Categories, and Search Results
• Friendly admin-privileges flow for cask installers that need root, with a dedicated progress sheet
• Live background-activity panel in Settings — package classification, Discover index build, and homepage enrichment
• New Homepage Enrichment cache in Settings → Storage, with a size readout and individual Clear button, plus Clear All Caches
• Font casks now categorise correctly the first time — anything starting with font- is recognised immediately
• Categories database rebuilt against the live Homebrew cask catalog — ~1,100 cask classifications recovered, bundled DB ~25% smaller
• Update badges and buttons restyled in calmer App Store blue with semibold weight
• Fixed: the menu-bar agent's "Last checked" line now shows the wall-clock time of the last poll instead of being frozen at "0 sec ago"

May 2, 2026

The menu-bar app now contributes the same anonymous usage signals as the main app — launch, what each check finds, button clicks, and cadence changes — so we can see how the menu-bar experience is actually used. The existing privacy toggle (Settings → Privacy → Share anonymous usage data) silences both at once.

• Anonymous telemetry for the menu-bar agent — same signals as the main app, tagged surface: agent
• Covers agent launch, poll outcomes, Upgrade All / Check Now / Open EasyBrew clicks, and poll-cadence changes
• Cross-bundle privacy toggle — Settings → Privacy → Share anonymous usage data silences both processes

May 1, 2026

A friendlier first run for the menu-bar app and much broader anonymous usage analytics. A new first-launch screen introduces the menu-bar app and offers a single Enable at Login button that registers and starts it on the spot — no trip to System Settings required. The analytics overhaul covers surfaces that were previously silent: services, Doctor runs, search, app updates, AI features, settings toggles, and failure paths for install/uninstall/upgrade. No package names, search queries, or version strings are ever sent.

• First-launch onboarding sheet for the menu-bar agent with a one-click Enable at Login
• Telemetry overhaul covering services, doctor runs, search, AI feature usage, settings toggles, and install/uninstall/upgrade failures
• Cohort dimensions on launch and update-check events — first-launch, Apple Intelligence availability, language, installed-package bucket
• No package names, search queries, or version strings are ever sent
• Fixed: Menu Bar settings tab recovers cleanly after an in-app update — a Setup Needed banner with a single Register Now button replaces the dead-end "Agent not bundled in this build" message
• Fixed: analytics integration was silently dropped in dev builds — consolidated AnalyticsService.swift to a single source of truth so signals reach the dashboard from any build path

April 30, 2026

A new menu-bar companion lives quietly in your status bar and tells you, at a glance, how many of your installed packages are out of date — with a red marker the moment any of them picks up a known security issue. Click the mug glyph to upgrade everything, open the main app, change how often it checks (15 min, 30 min, 1 hour, or 3 hours), or quit. Set it up under Settings → Menu Bar with a Launch at login toggle and a one-click Launch / Stop control. The update count matches what you see in the main app — only the apps and tools you installed yourself, not their hidden dependencies.

• Menu-bar companion — a mug glyph in your status bar with a live count of available updates
• Red marker the moment any installed package matches a known CVE
• Configurable check cadence — 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 3 hours (default: 30 minutes)
• Menu actions: Upgrade All, Open EasyHomebrew, Check Now, Check Interval, Quit
• New Settings → Menu Bar tab with Launch at login, Launch / Stop controls, and a shortcut to System Settings → Login Items
• Friendly walkthrough when macOS asks you to approve the helper, with the status refreshing automatically once you return from System Settings
• Fixed: the menu update count now matches the main app — only the apps and tools you installed yourself, not their internal dependencies

April 27, 2026

A major rework of the package detail page in the spirit of the App Store. The new page opens at 70% of the window and gathers everything you need to decide on a package in one place: a stats strip (version, install state, license, macOS minimum, category), an AI-written description from the package's website, a screenshot gallery with a native carousel, popularity numbers for the last 30/90/365 days, related versions, plus the existing dependencies, caveats, and vulnerabilities. Also new: a Games category with 117 reclassified packages, on-the-fly AI categorisation when you open something that hasn't been classified yet, and minimum-macOS reporting for apps.

• App Store-style package detail page — opens at 70% of the window, click outside or ✕ to close
• Statistics strip: Version · Installed · License · macOS · Category, all at a glance
• AI homepage enrichment — Apple Intelligence reads the package's homepage to write a 2–4-sentence description and pick screenshots; cached on disk for 7 days
• Three-layer image filtering (HTML candidate pruning, AI prompt with size hints, post-AI download validation via CGImageSource) eliminates logos, favicons, sprites, and skinny banners
• Native screenshot carousel — click any thumbnail for a fit-to-window preview with ←/→ keys, dot indicator
• Variants navigation — sibling versions and flavors (e.g. python@3.11 ↔ python@3.12, firefox ↔ firefox-developer-edition) shown as click-through mini-cards
• Brew install analytics for 30 / 90 / 365 days, sourced from formulae.brew.sh
• Minimum macOS version for casks now read from depends_on.macos
• New Games category — 117 packages reclassified (game launchers, emulators, open-source games, CLI games, game-dev engines)
• On-demand AI category classification when opening the detail page for an uncategorised package
• Action buttons moved into the header under the brew description; standalone Actions section and Close button removed (replaced by the top-right ✕)
• Stat strip slimmed: Type (Cask/Formula) cell removed; Category cell shows the SF symbol with label moved to hover tooltip

April 22, 2026

A new list/grid toggle lets you browse every package list as cards instead of rows, and variants of the same app (e.g. firefox, firefox@esr, firefox-developer-edition) now collapse under a single entry with a +N expander. Grouping is smart enough not to merge unrelated tools just because they happen to share a host like GitHub or PyPI. Plus a definitive fix for the "Homebrew is busy" false positive — Homebrew's leftover lock files no longer block your upgrades.

• List/grid toggle in the toolbar — choice remembered across launches
• Variant grouping collapses flavors of the same app under a canonical entry with a +N expander (list: inline, grid: popover)
• Grouping is domain-aware — registered-domain match, ignoring multi-tenant hosts like GitHub, GitLab, and PyPI
• Enabled on All Packages and per-category views
• Formulae filter consistently labelled "Formulae" everywhere, matching toolbar stats and sidebar
• Discover's BETA badge now reads as a transparent badge next to the title instead of inside the Liquid Glass pill
• All Packages drops the "Group by Category" toolbar shortcut — category navigation lives in the sidebar
• Fixed: "Homebrew is busy" no longer cries wolf on leftover zero-byte Homebrew lock files — check now uses flock(2), matching Homebrew's own mechanism

April 21, 2026

Same-day hotfix for a bug in v1.5.4: leftover Homebrew lock files were triggering a false "Homebrew is busy" dialog and blocking every upgrade. We now check the same way Homebrew does, so this no longer happens.

• Pre-flight lock check no longer mis-flags Homebrew's leftover zero-byte lock files
• Lock detection now uses flock(2) to probe whether another process actually holds the file, matching Homebrew's own mechanism

April 21, 2026

Brew Doctor can actually fix things now — every warning becomes a card with a one-click "Run fix" button, and a top card surfaces missing dependencies with a batch install. Friendlier error messages across the app, and no more UI desyncs when you run brew in Terminal while the app is upgrading.

• Brew Doctor: each warning is a card with a one-click "Run fix" button — deprecated casks and formulae, unlinked kegs, missing dependencies, stray Ruby files, PATH ordering, and more
• Apple Intelligence optionally explains unrecognised Doctor warnings on macOS 26+
• "Install N missing dependencies" top card surfaces results from brew missing
• Friendlier error messages — short titles, readable bodies, raw brew output tucked behind a Details disclosure with Copy Details
• Tap any failed row in Upgrade All to see its specific error
• Lock-aware batches: if another brew process is running, EasyHomebrew stops cleanly with a "Homebrew is busy" dialog and Retry
• Package state auto-resyncs when the app returns to the foreground — no more stale UI after running brew elsewhere

April 17, 2026

Adds opt-in anonymous usage analytics so we can see which features matter most and where to invest next. Aggregate events only — no package names, search queries, or anything that could identify you. Toggle it off in Settings → Privacy.

• Anonymous usage analytics — aggregate events like "a cask was installed" or "the Updates tab was opened"
• No package names, search queries, or personally identifiable data is ever sent
• Toggle off any time from Settings → Privacy

April 17, 2026

New Reinstall action, an at-a-glance EasyHomebrew status panel, automatic vulnerability scanning during updates, and a cleaner Updates list that hides internal dependencies.

• Reinstall button on the package page — fresh copy without removing it from your list
• New EasyHomebrew status section (bottom-left): app version, packages scanned, packages affected, and disk space used by the app itself
• BETA label on Discover — semantic search is still experimental
• Vulnerability scanning now runs automatically when checking for updates, so outdated and unsafe packages surface together
• Updates list shows only the apps and tools you installed yourself — internal dependencies are no longer listed separately
• Cleaner bottom-left status layout: Cellar and Caskroom disk usage grouped with Homebrew stats; Quick Update and Clean Up always available

April 17, 2026

Maintenance release with stability and performance improvements across package browsing, services, and the Discover view.

• Stability improvements in package browsing and search
• Faster refresh for installed packages and outdated list
• Polish for Discover semantic search results on macOS 26
• UI refinements for Brew Doctor diagnostics and services logs
• Bug fixes reported by early beta testers

April 16, 2026

Initial public beta. All core features shipped — package and cask management, CVE scanning, services, Brew Doctor, batch operations, Discover, and full localisation.

• Browse, install, upgrade, and uninstall Homebrew formulae and casks
• CVE vulnerability scanning against the OSV database with NVD links
• Services management with real-time log tailing and plist inspection
• Brew Doctor with Apple Intelligence diagnostics on macOS 26+
• Batch operations for multi-package install and uninstall
• Discover — on-device semantic package search via NLEmbedding
• Localised in English, French, Greek, German, Italian, and Spanish