List of installable Homebrew casks

MacosHomebrewHomebrew Cask

Macos Problem Overview


Is there a way to obtain a list (possibly with descriptions) of all the casks installable with Homebrew Cask?

Macos Solutions


Solution 1 - Macos

The new way to list all installable cask packages is:

brew search --casks

The man page for brew has the following information:

> search --casks > > Display all locally available casks (including tapped ones). No online search is performed.

Solution 2 - Macos

Brew search now has a --desc flag.

This lists all of them with the description:

brew search --casks --desc ''

Solution 3 - Macos

List using a browser

  1. Visit the website <https://formulae.brew.sh/>
  2. Use * as search string and all the casks will be displayed

List using the command line

for cask in $(brew search); do
    brew cask info $cask;
done

Solution 4 - Macos

Run brew search without argument to list all of them. You won’t get descriptions, thought.

Solution 5 - Macos

The installable list is 7000+ casks. You, of course, can grep the result.., but more practical is to list some subset of the installable casks using search command:

> brew search [YOUR-SEARCH-SUBSTRING]

It will print you 2 groups. The first group will be installable ==> Formulae, if any. The second group will be ==> Casks


For example, if you are looking for Beaver DB browser, you can type either:

brew search Beaver

---- Output ----
==> Casks
dbeaver-enterprise   dbeaver-enterprise   swiftybeaver         swiftybeaver

or:

brew search DB

---- Output ----
==> Formulae
ansible-cmdb              dbmate                    lbdb                      mariadb@10.2              questdb
...
==> Casks
1password-beta                             dynamodb-local                             mongodb-compass-readonly
actual-odbc-pack                           dynamodb-local                             mongodbpreferencepane
actual-odbc-pack                           exist-db                                   mongodbpreferencepane
apache-couchdb                             exist-db                                   navicat-for-mariadb
apache-couchdb                             flvcd-bigrats                              navicat-for-mariadb
arq-cloud-backup                           flvcd-bigrats                              nosql-workbench-for-amazon-dynamodb
arq-cloud-backup                           gcollazo-mongodb                           nosql-workbench-for-amazon-dynamodb
db-browser-for-sqlite                      gcollazo-mongodb                           nosqlbooster-for-mongodb
db-browser-for-sqlite                      handbrake                                  nosqlbooster-for-mongodb
dbeaver-community ✔                        handbrake                                  omnidb
dbeaver-community ✔                        handbrake-nightly                          omnidb
dbeaver-enterprise                         handbrakebatch                             rekordbox
dbeaver-enterprise                         handbrakebatch                             rekordbox
dbglass                                    hex-fiend-beta                             soundboosterlite
dbglass                                    macgdbp                                    soundboosterlite
dbkoda                                     macgdbp                                    sql-power-architect-jdbc
dbkoda                                     mongodb-compass                            sql-power-architect-jdbc
dbngin                                     mongodb-compass                            thingsmacsandboxhelper
dbngin                                     mongodb-compass-beta                       thingsmacsandboxhelper
dbschema                                   mongodb-compass-community                  thunderbird-beta
dbschema                                   mongodb-compass-community                  wireshark-chmodbpf
dbvisualizer                               mongodb-compass-isolated-edition           wireshark-chmodbpf
dbvisualizer                               mongodb-compass-isolated-edition
deadbeef-devel                             mongodb-compass-readonly

the mark indicates installed casks.

Solution 6 - Macos

Multiple ways to do, collating different answers:

for cask in $(brew search ''); do
brew info $cask; done

2. brew search --casks 3. brew search

You could one-line it to put results into file for later (because its really slow querying packages one by one):

for cask in $(brew search ''); do brew info $cask; echo "==="; done > list_of_casks.txt

Solution 7 - Macos

There's a new GUI that enables quick browsing on all the Homebrew packages.

You might want to try out Cakebrew

Also worth noting the analytics data of the top downloads of all cask packages in the past 365 days: https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/

Solution 8 - Macos

Slight modification to the answer above:

for cask in $(brew search --casks); do
    brew cask info $cask;
done

Solution 9 - Macos

If you're not interested in installation stats, which you could get by using brew search answers above, you could simply go with:

grep  -e '\(version\|cask\|creator\|desc\|homepage\) ' /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-cask/Casks/*.rb

This will get you a list lite this:

zotero.rb:cask "zotero" do
zotero.rb:  version "5.0.96.3"
zotero.rb:  desc "Collect, organize, cite, and share research sources"
zotero.rb:  homepage "https://www.zotero.org/"
zprint.rb:cask "zprint" do
zprint.rb:  version "1.2.1"
zprint.rb:  desc "Library to reformat Clojure and Clojurescript source code and s-expressions"
zprint.rb:  homepage "https://github.com/kkinnear/zprint"
zterm.rb:cask "zterm" do
zterm.rb:  version "1.2"
zterm.rb:  desc "Terminal emulation program"
zterm.rb:  homepage "https://www.dalverson.com/zterm/"

which will be instant, rather than waiting for ages for

for cask in $(brew search ''); do brew info $cask; echo "\n\n"; done

where you'd get prettier results and info regarding popularity:

cobalt: stable 0.17.5 (bottled)
Static site generator written in Rust
https://cobalt-org.github.io/
Not installed
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/cobalt.rb
License: MIT
==> Dependencies
Build: rust
==> Analytics
install: 10 (30 days), 45 (90 days), 147 (365 days)
install-on-request: 10 (30 days), 45 (90 days), 147 (365 days)
build-error: 0 (30 days)



coccinelle: stable 1.1.1 (bottled), HEAD
Program matching and transformation engine for C code
http://coccinelle.lip6.fr/
Not installed
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/coccinelle.rb
License: GPL-2.0-only
==> Dependencies
Build: autoconf, automake, hevea, ocaml-findlib, opam, pkg-config
Required: ocaml, pcre
==> Options
--HEAD
	Install HEAD version
==> Analytics
install: 3 (30 days), 22 (90 days), 167 (365 days)
install-on-request: 3 (30 days), 22 (90 days), 167 (365 days)
build-error: 0 (30 days)

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