I built a visual TUI for Homebrew with React and Ink

#opensource #terminal #react #typescript

Why I built Brew-TUI

If you're a macOS developer, you probably use Homebrew every day. But memorizing all the brew commands gets old — especially when you just want to see what's outdated, upgrade a few packages, or check if a service is running.

So I built Brew-TUI: a full visual terminal UI for Homebrew.

What it looks like

It's a keyboard-driven TUI built with React 18 + Ink 5 (terminal renderer) and Zustand for state management. You get:

Dashboard — package stats, outdated counts, services, system info at a glance
Installed — browse and filter all formulae and casks with version info
Search — find and install packages without leaving the TUI
Outdated — see version diffs, upgrade one by one or all at once
Services — start/stop/restart Homebrew services
Doctor — run brew doctor and see warnings
Package Info — dependencies, caveats, quick actions

Navigate with 1-0 to jump to views, j/k to scroll, / to search, Tab to cycle. Press L to switch between English and Spanish.

The tech stack

TypeScript (strict mode, ESM-only)
React 18 for the component tree
Ink 5 as the terminal renderer (<Box> = flexbox, <Text> = styled output)
Zustand for state management
tsup for building

The data flow is: Views → Zustand stores → brew-api → Parsers → brew CLI (spawn). Streaming operations (install, upgrade) use an AsyncGenerator that yields lines in real time.

Pro features

There's also a freemium tier with:

Profiles — export/import your Homebrew setup across machines
Smart Cleanup — find orphan packages and reclaim disk space
History — track every install/uninstall/upgrade
Security Audit — scan packages against the OSV vulnerability database
BrewBar — a macOS menu bar companion app (Swift 6 / SwiftUI) that shows outdated counts and lets you upgrade from the menu bar

Install

# npm
npm install -g brew-tui

# Homebrew
brew tap MoLinesGitHub/tap
brew install brew-tui

# Run without installing
npx brew-tui

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