Changelog

May 8, 2026

A polish release on top of the v1.6.6 feature push. 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 Authors browser is noticeably snappier with a new caching layer, and a few rough edges are gone: avatars no longer get stuck on the generic box glyph, and the license field renders with better visual balance on the package page.

• 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: Authors browser performance — caching layer makes scrolling and switching authors noticeably snappier
• Fixed: Authors browser icons no longer get stuck on the generic box glyph
• Fixed: license field rendering on the package detail page — better visual balance with the rest of the strip

May 3, 2026

Browse Homebrew by who built it. A new Authors view groups every package under its upstream author or organisation, with avatars and friendly names ("Anthropic" instead of "anthropics"). Pick an author on the left, see their packages on the right, sorted by category. Every package detail page now has a "by <author>" line. The Updates page gets a long-overdue makeover: a prominent Upgrade All up front, 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, and three new caches in Storage can be cleared individually or all at once.

• New Authors browser — every package grouped by upstream author or organisation, with avatars
• Avatar resolution via GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, Bitbucket, and SourceHut, with site-favicon fallback
• Friendly display names from the GitHub API plus on-device AI for non-GitHub authors
• "by <author>" line on every package detail page
• 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, Search Results, and Authors
• 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, author lookups, avatar/icon fetches, homepage enrichment
• Three new caches in Settings → Storage (Homepage Enrichment, Author Names, Author Icons), each with size readouts and individual Clear buttons, 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: taps, 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 taps, services, doctor runs, search, Sparkle, 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) and Tap cells 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, taps, 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
• Tap management — add, remove, and browse third-party repositories
• 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