Awesome
Cork
A fast GUI for Homebrew written in SwiftUI
Special Thanks
I'd like to personally thank Seb Jachec for implementing a system for getting real-time outputs of Brew commands.
Without his contribution, many of the processes that depend on real-time outputs, such as installation, uninstallation and updating of packages, would be impossible.
I'd like to personally thank Dmitri Bouniol and Ben Carlsson for coming up with a way for self-compiled builds to bypass the license check.
Without them, it would be impossible to have a free self-compiled version of the app.
Advantages of Cork
Cork is not just an interface for Homebrew. It has many features that are either very hard to accomplish using Homebrew alone, or straight-up not possible.
Things that are not possible without Cork
- Automatically respecting system proxy.
- Clearing of cached downloads.
- Updating packages from the Menu Bar without having Cork open.
- Seeing this much info about a package in one convenient location.
- Tagging packages. This is a Cork-only feature that lets you mark any number of packages you'd like to keep track of.
Things that Cork makes easier
- Listing of installed packages. Cork has its own way of loading packages, which is around 10 times faster than the Homebrew implementation.
- Knowing which packages you installed intentionally, and which packages were installed only as dependencies. While somewhat possible with the
brew leaves
command, it is often unreliable, often not listing packages that should be included. - Updating of only selected packages. Again, while possible with Homebrew alone, Cork makes it so easy you wouldn't believe it is not this simple in Homebrew itself.
- Showing you exactly which packages a package is a dependency of. Super annoying in Homebrew, effortless with Cork.
- Effortlessly managing Homebrew services with a simple click of a button in a beautiful sub-window.
- And many other features! Just try Cork out and try finding them all π
Getting Cork
Pre-compiled, always up-to-date versions are available from my Homebrew tap. You can get access to it in a few ways:
- Buy Cork for 25β¬ through the website. You will get access to all future versions at no additional cost.
- Become a contributor. For example, you can:
- Translate Cork into your language, and keep your translation updated. I'd recommend joining the Cork Discord, as I always ping the translators there when new text is ready for translating.
If you aren't sure how to go about translating Cork, I'd recommend asking the translation team on Discord. They have the
Linguist
role. If you'd prefer to learn on your own, this Apple documentation article is a nice introduction to the process: Internalization. - Implement a feature tagged with
Help Wanted
in the Issue Tracker. Please respect the coding style. The main deviation from the Swift convention is that brackets are on their own lines.
- Translate Cork into your language, and keep your translation updated. I'd recommend joining the Cork Discord, as I always ping the translators there when new text is ready for translating.
If you aren't sure how to go about translating Cork, I'd recommend asking the translation team on Discord. They have the
However, if you don't want to do any of the above, you can always compile Cork yourself. See below for instructions.
Screenshots
Main Window
Package Info
<p align="center"> <img alt="Package Info" src="https://i.imgur.com/U8nCdlc.png" width="28%"> <img alt="Package Info - Full-size Caveats" src="https://i.imgur.com/lm2AhnX.png" width="28%"> <img alt="Package Info - Minimized Caveats" src="https://i.imgur.com/KFonAHx.png" width="28%"> </p>Tap Info
<p align="center"> <img alt="Tap Info - Formulae Only" src="https://i.imgur.com/VZi6jKK.png" width="47%"> <img alt="Tap Info - Formulae and Casks" src="https://i.imgur.com/ZCDlel6.png" width="47%"> </p>Install Package
<p align="center"> <img alt="Install Package" src="https://i.imgur.com/c5BNkl3.png" width="28%"> <img alt="Install Package - Fetching Dependencies" src="https://i.imgur.com/x8qWBMO.png" width="28%"> <img alt="Install Package - Installing Dependencies" src="https://i.imgur.com/dIgYKoj.png" width="28%"> </p>Add Taps
Brew Maintenance
<p align="center"> <img alt="Brew Maintenance" src="https://i.imgur.com/Ky9kjPo.png" width="47%"> <img alt="Brew Maintenance Results" src="https://i.imgur.com/sxjbRg2.png" width="47%"> </p>Media
Do you run a blog, a magazine, make videos, or just make content about apps for fun? Get in touch at dev@corkmac.app!
I will provide you with the newest release and development version, answer any questions you have, and introduce you to Cork personally (and for free, or course), so you can focus on creating.
Compiling Cork
Compiling Cork is simple, as it does not have many dependencies. It uses Tuist to generate Xcode projects to speed up compilation.
Prerequisites:
- macOS Ventura or newer
- Xcode 16 or newer
- Git
- Homebrew
Instructions:
Before you begin
Skip if you already have an Apple Developer account
- Enroll your account in the developer program at https://developer.apple.com/. You don't need a paid account, a free one works fine
- Install Xcode
- Add your Developer account to Xcode. To do so, in the Menu bar, click
Xcode β Settings
, and in the window that opens, clickAccounts
. You can add your account there - After you add your account, it will appear in the list of Apple IDs on the left of the screen. Select your account there
- At the bottom of the screen, click
Manage Certificates...
- On the bottom left, click the + icon and select
Apple Development
- When a new item appears in the list called
Apple Development Certificates
, you can pressDone
to close the account manager
Installing Tuist and Its Prerequisites
Skip if you already have Tuist and Mise installed
Installing Mise
Cork uses Mise to prevent conflicts arising from mismatched Tuist versions across Macs. Mise is a tool similar to Homebrew, but offers some advantages for Tusit specifically, like the aforementioned version synchronization.
- Install Mise using
curl https://mise.run | sh
- Initialize Mise using the command you see after the installation finishes. It's located under
mise: run the following to activate mise in your shell:
.
In my case, it wasecho "eval \"\$(/Users/david/.local/bin/mise activate zsh)\"" >> "/Users/david/.zshrc"
[!CAUTION] Make sure to copy the command Mise itself gives you, and not the one I used above. This command is only valid for my Mac, and will not work on your machine.
- Add
mise
to your path using one of the following commands, depending on your shell.
- zsh:
echo 'eval "$(~/.local/bin/mise activate zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc
- bash:
echo 'eval "$(~/.local/bin/mise activate bash)"' >> ~/.bashrc
- fish:
echo '~/.local/bin/mise activate fish | source' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish
[!TIP] zsh is the default macOS shell.
[!NOTE] If you don't know which shell you're running, use the command
echo $SHELL
. The last part of the output after the last slash is the name of your shell In my case, the output of the command is/bin/zsh
. This means my shell iszsh
Installing Tuist
- Install Tuist using
mise install tuist
Compiling Cork
- I recommend you pick a version marked by one of the version tags. Those are released versions. If you decide to compile the current state of any of the branches, you might encounter experience-breaking bugs and unfinished features
- Use the command
git clone https://github.com/buresdv/Cork.git && cd Cork && mise use tuist@4.25.0 && tuist install && tuist generate --no-binary-cache
. Xcode will open the project.
- Wait until all the dependencies are resolved. It should take a couple minutes at most
- In the file browser on the left, click
Cork
at the very top. It's the icon with the App Store logo - In the pane that opens on the right, click
Signing & Capabilities
at the top - Under
Signing
, switch theTeam
dropdown toNone
- Under
Signing β macOS
, switch theSigning Certificate
toSign to Run Locally
- If it isn't already selected, change the Build Scheme to
Self-Compiled
in Xcode's toolbar.
[!WARNING] If you don't select the correct Build Scheme, Cork will require you to put in a license.
- In the Menu Bar, click
Product β Archive
and wait for the building to finish - A new window will open. From the list of Cork rows, select the topmost one, and click
Distribute App
- In the popup that appears, click
Custom
, then clickNext
in the bottom right of the popup - Click
Copy App
- Open the resulting folder. You'll see an app called Cork. Drag Cork to your
/Applications/
folder, and you're done!
License
Cork is licensed under Commons Clause.
This means that Cork's source source is available and you can modify it, contribute to it etc., but you can't sell or distribute Cork or modified versions of it.
Moreover, you canβt distribute compiled versions of Cork without consulting me first. Compiling versions for your personal use is fine.