I built a CLI package manager for macOS because brew list hid 145 dependencies

Master_Shivnath — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 06:32:38 +0000

I ran brew list on my Mac and got 188 names.

I knew maybe 40 of them. The other 145 were libraries that arrived because
something else needed them — abseil, icu4c, isl, highway. Nothing told
me which was which, what anything did, how much space it took, or which command
would remove it safely.

That is the problem Cydia and Sileo solved on a jailbroken iPhone: one list,
searchable, with a Remove button. macOS never got that view. So I built one.

What Dronagiri does

Dronagiri is a terminal app that reads the package databases of Homebrew, npm,
pipx, Cargo, RubyGems and go install, then puts everything in one sortable
table:

real on-disk size, measured with one batched du
install date
one-line description and homepage
last-used evidence from Spotlight and timestamped shell history
popularity from Homebrew's public analytics
dependencies in their own tab, each labelled with the packages that need it
broken entries: packages a manager still lists whose files are gone

The part I use most is the Mine / Dependencies split. brew list treats the
40 tools I chose and the 145 libraries they dragged in as one flat list.
Dronagiri separates them.

The hard parts

Two things were harder than the UI.

Dependencies lie. Homebrew's JSON lists declared dependencies, which is wrong
surprisingly often. Dronagiri asks brew deps <formula> for the actual runtime
linkage, then inverts the graph. That is why it can say "needed by ffmpeg, mpv"
instead of guessing.

"Last used" is mostly unknowable. APFS mounts with noatime, so access
times never change. Most shells do not timestamp their history. Dronagiri uses
Spotlight's kMDItemLastUsedDate for .app bundles and timestamped shell
history for commands. When neither exists, it says never — meaning no trace,
not proof you never ran it. The detail panel spells that out.

Safety

Deletion is deliberately inconvenient. Select rows with space, press d, and
confirm twice in bordered dialogs. The first window lists every package and the
space freed; the second is a last-chance warning. Removal is delegated to the
manager that installed the package. No --force, no --ignore-dependencies, no
private APIs.

Try it

go install github.com/MasterShivnath007/dronagiri@latest
dronagiri

Or download a binary for Apple Silicon or Intel from the releases page. It is
MIT-licensed, macOS 13+, and there is no telemetry or account.

Website and install guide: https://mastershivnath007.github.io/dronagiri/
Source: https://github.com/MasterShivnath007/dronagiri
The brew list comparison: https://mastershivnath007.github.io/dronagiri/#compare

If you try it, I would like to know what your Mine/Dependencies split looks
like — and which package you were surprised to find.

DEV Community: Master_Shivnath

I built a CLI package manager for macOS because brew list hid 145 dependencies

What Dronagiri does

The hard parts

Safety

Try it