Cork

A fast GUI for Homebrew written in SwiftUI

AI Policy

Absolutely no AI is used to create any part of the app. All code and documentation is completely human-made.

Special Thanks

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 😉

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 25€ 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.

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

Tap Info

Install Package

Add Taps

Brew Maintenance

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:

[!WARNING] Follow these steps exactly, and do not deviate from any step unless you are a developer. This includes changing any settings in Xcode, or accepting any recommended Xcode "fixes." If you do, the app might not work.

Before you begin

Skip if you already have an Apple Developer account

0. Enroll your account in the developer program at https://developer.apple.com/. You don't need a paid account, a free one works fine

1. Install Xcode

2. In the Terminal, run the following command: sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app

   This command allows the Terminal to interact with Xcode's Terminal features, which is necessary for Mise and Tuist to work.

3. Add your Developer account to Xcode. To do so, in the Menu bar, click Xcode → Settings, and in the window that opens, click Accounts. You can add your account there

4. After you add your account, it will appear in the list of Apple IDs on the left of the screen. Select your account there

5. At the bottom of the screen, click Manage Certificates...

6. On the bottom left, click the + icon and select Apple Development

7. When a new item appears in the list called Apple Development Certificates, you can press Done 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 Tuist specifically, like the aforementioned version synchronization.

1. Install Mise using curl https://mise.run | sh
2. 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 was echo "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.

3. 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 is zsh

Installing Tuist

1. Install Tuist using mise install tuist

Compiling Cork

0. I recommend you pick a version of Cork marked by one of the version tags which define released versions. If you decide to compile the current state of any of the branches, you might encounter experience-breaking bugs and unfinished features
1. Use the command git clone https://github.com/buresdv/Cork.git && cd Cork && git checkout <VERSION TAG>; mise exec tuist@4.50.2 -- tuist install && mise exec tuist@4.50.2 -- tuist generate --no-binary-cache.

• Mise will ask you to trust the local .mise.toml.
• You can either:
  • Say yes, to always use tuist version 4.50.2 in this directory.
  • Say no, and the command will use tuist 4.50.2 anyway, but future invocations of tuist will not be version controlled.
• Xcode will open the project.

2. Wait until all the dependencies are resolved. It should take a couple minutes at most
3. In the file browser on the left, click Cork at the very top. It's the icon with the App Store logo
4. In the pane that opens on the right, click Signing & Capabilities at the top
5. Under Signing, switch the Team dropdown to None
6. Under Signing → macOS, switch the Signing Certificate to Sign to Run Locally
7. 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.

8. In the Menu Bar, click Product → Archive and wait for the building to finish
9. A new window will open. From the list of Cork rows, select the topmost one, and click Distribute App
10. In the popup that appears, click Custom, then click Next in the bottom right of the popup
11. Click Copy App
12. Open the resulting folder. You'll see an app called Cork. Drag Cork to your /Applications/ folder, and you're done!