Homebrew Autoupdate

An easy, convenient way to automatically update Homebrew.

This script will run brew update in the background once every 24 hours (by default) until explicitly told to stop, utilising launchd.

brew upgrade and brew cleanup can also be handled automatically, but are optional flags.

Notifications are enabled by default using a code-signed, universal macOS app. Pass --notify-on-error to suppress successful-run notifications, or --no-notify to disable notifications entirely.

Installing this command

Tap the repository and trust its external command:

brew tap domt4/autoupdate
brew trust --command domt4/autoupdate/autoupdate

Homebrew is moving towards requiring explicit trust before loading commands from non-official taps. Command-scoped trust is recommended here because it permits only brew autoupdate; it does not trust every current or future formula, cask, or command in this tap.

Existing users who see an untrusted tap warning can run the brew trust command above. When trust enforcement is enabled, an already installed launch agent will continue running its scheduled built-in brew update, upgrade, and cleanup commands. Management commands such as brew autoupdate status, stop, or delete will be unavailable until autoupdate is trusted.

See Homebrew's tap trust documentation and issue #222 for background.

Now run brew autoupdate start [interval] [options] to enable autoupdate. The interval defaults to 24 hours and accepts seconds or a short duration such as 30m, 12h, or 1d.

Note: To ensure that auto-updated cask-based apps are updated in place (so they stay on your Dock), add ~/Library/Application Support/com.github.domt4.homebrew-autoupdate/brew_autoupdate to System Settings / Privacy and Security / App Management. (Also allow ruby and Terminal.app)

Example

brew autoupdate start 12h --upgrade --cleanup --immediate --sudo

This will upgrade all your casks and formulae every 12 hours and on every system boot. If a sudo password is required for an upgrade, a GUI to enter your password will be displayed. Also, it will clean up every old version and left-over files.

Casks that have built-in auto-updates enabled by default will not be upgraded.

Upgrade Only Specific Packages

brew autoupdate start 12h --upgrade --only=wget,node,firefox

This will only auto-upgrade wget, node, and firefox every 12 hours, leaving all other installed packages untouched. Both formulae and casks are supported, including tap-qualified names (homebrew/cask/firefox) and versioned formulae (node@20).

Cannot be combined with --leaves-only. To change which packages are auto-upgraded, run brew autoupdate delete then start again with the new list.

Usage

From tap: domt4/autoupdate
Usage: brew autoupdate subcommand [options]

An easy, convenient way to automatically update Homebrew.

This script will run brew update in the background once every 24 hours (by
default) until explicitly told to stop, utilising launchd.

Start autoupdating with:
  brew autoupdate start [interval] [options]

The interval defaults to 24 hours. It can be provided as seconds or as a
duration such as 30m, 12h, 1d, or 1w.

Common start options:
  --upgrade upgrades installed formulae and casks.
  --cleanup cleans Homebrew's cache and logs after a successful run.
  --immediate runs immediately and whenever the launch agent is loaded.
  --only=wget,node,firefox upgrades only the listed packages.
  --leaves-only upgrades only top-level formulae.
  --greedy includes auto-updating casks.
  --sudo enables a GUI password prompt for cask upgrades.
  --ac-only skips runs while the Mac is on battery power.
  --notify-on-error shows notifications only for failed runs.
  --no-notify disables notifications.

Examples:
  brew autoupdate start
  brew autoupdate start 12h --upgrade --cleanup --immediate
  brew autoupdate start 1d --upgrade --only=wget,node,firefox
  brew autoupdate logs --lines=50
  brew autoupdate logs --follow

Run brew autoupdate start --help or brew autoupdate logs --help for complete
options for those subcommands.

Subcommands:
  start:
    Start autoupdating in the background.
  stop:
    Stop autoupdating while retaining the launch agent, configuration, and logs.
  delete:
    Stop autoupdating and delete its launch agent, configuration, and logs.
  status:
    Show whether autoupdate is running and describe its installed configuration.
  version:
    Show this tool's current version and a short changelog.
  logs:
    Show output from autoupdate runs.

  -d, --debug                      Display any debugging information.
  -q, --quiet                      Make some output more quiet.
  -v, --verbose                    Make some output more verbose.
  -h, --help                       Show this message.

From tap: domt4/autoupdate
Usage: brew autoupdate start [interval] [options]:
    Start autoupdating in the background. The interval defaults to 24 hours and
accepts seconds or a suffix such as 30m, 12h, or 1d.

  -d, --debug                      Display any debugging information.
  -q, --quiet                      Make some output more quiet.
  -v, --verbose                    Make some output more verbose.
  -h, --help                       Show this message.
      --upgrade                    Automatically upgrade installed formulae and
                                   casks.
      --greedy                     Include auto-updating casks when upgrading.
      --cleanup                    Automatically clean Homebrew's cache and
                                   logs.
      --immediate                  Run immediately and on login instead of
                                   waiting for the first interval.
      --sudo                       Open a GUI password prompt when a cask
                                   upgrade requires sudo. Requires
                                   pinentry-mac to be installed.
      --leaves-only                Upgrade only top-level formulae that are not
                                   dependencies.
      --only                       Upgrade only these formulae and/or casks
                                   (comma-separated). Requires --upgrade.
      --ac-only                    Run only while the Mac is connected to AC
                                   power.
      --notify-on-error            Notify only when an autoupdate run fails.
      --no-notify                  Disable autoupdate notifications.

From tap: domt4/autoupdate
Usage: brew autoupdate logs [options]:
    Show output from autoupdate runs.

  -d, --debug                      Display any debugging information.
  -q, --quiet                      Make some output more quiet.
  -v, --verbose                    Make some output more verbose.
  -h, --help                       Show this message.
  -f, --follow                     Follow the log as new output is written.
  -n, --lines                      Show this many lines from the end of the log.
                                   Defaults to 10.

Logs of the performed operations can be found at: ~/Library/Logs/com.github.domt4.homebrew-autoupdate

This vs brew's built-in autoupdate mechanism

This command mostly exists to ensure Homebrew is updated regardless of whether you invoke brew or not, which is the primary difference from the autoupdate mechanism built into brew, the latter requiring a user to explicitly run any of brew install, brew tap or brew upgrade.

If you run brew commands regularly yourself, you may wish to consider using the built-in autoupdate mechanism, which can be instructed to autoupdate less often, or disabled entirely. If you wish to update every 24 hours using the built-in autoupdate mechanism set this in your environment:

export HOMEBREW_AUTO_UPDATE_SECS="86400"

or if you wish to disable the built-in autoupdate mechanism entirely:

export HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE="1"

Please note that Homebrew slightly frowns upon people disabling the built-in autoupdate mechanism.

TO-DO (PRs Welcome)

History

This tap was created by DomT4 in April 2015 to address a personal desire for a background updater, before being moved to the Homebrew organisation in April 2021 to become an official part of the project after gaining somewhat widespread usage, something I'm both surprised by, but also very appreciative of people finding a small tool I wrote so useful & contributing their own ideas and time towards.

It was in late 2023 moved back to DomT4's ownership to reduce the burden on the wider Homebrew leadership team in terms of maintenance/support requests.

License

Code is under the BSD 2 Clause (NetBSD) license.