Update all your macOS apps in one command line
2 min read

Update all your macOS apps in one command line

Update all your macOS apps in one command line
Thanks to the App Store, since 2011, you can update a few apps automatically from it. But that's not enough to fully update your macOS apps. As a good mac user, you're probably using Homebrew every day. Good news, we will use Homebrew Cask, which extends Homebrew and another little package which is called homebrew-cask-upgrade to speed up the installation of outdated apps installed with cask.

Okay guys, it's almost the weekend, so you're going to have plenty of time to update all your apps ;) jk. After reading this article, and setting up your mac, you will be able to update almost all your apps in one single line! Isn't it great?

Installation of Homebrew

Homebrew Cask is an extension of Homebrew and will help you to install your binaries from your terminal. First of all, you need to install Homebrew. Homebrew Cask is already included in Homebrew. If you already installed it,  you can skip the following installation :

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Installation of homebrew-cask-upgrade

Homebrew Cask is great, but you can't update all your outdated apps in one single line. That's why we are going to install homebrew-cask-upgrade :

brew tap buo/cask-upgrade

Install all your app with Homebrew Cask

Now the fun part ;) You can use the command line "brew cask install APP_NAME" to install your application. For example, for imageoptim :

brew cask install imageoptim

Important! If the app is already installed in your computer, you need to force the installation :

brew cask install --force imageoptim

If you are looking for a specific app but you can't find it, use the command "brew search KEYWORD", for example for Iterm :

➜  ~ brew search iterm
==> Casks
cd-to-iterm          iterm2 ✔          iterm2-beta ✔
iterm2-legacy        iterm2-nightly ✔

Update all your apps in one single line

The long-awaited moment has arrived. 🎉

brew cu -a

Yay! That's it! You don't have to be jealous of linux anymore ;) ! You can now update your apps with this command line.


Parameters "-a" : update apps that already have an auto-updater included.

If you don't want to install homebrew-cask-upgrade, you can still upgrade all your app with the following command line. But personally, I like the look of homebrew-cask-upgrade :)

brew cask install `brew cask list`

If you're interested in my apps :