Without further ado, let’s have a look at some of the important additions, fixes and adjustments, because I forgot most of the less important ones.

Additions

• Every real-time command has an option to display the raw Homebrew output of the running command #196

• Better package UX:

  • Any package can now be previewed from anywhere inside Cork, not just in select places

    • Consequently, now you can preview even installed packages, so you can see the details for more than one package at a time. This still has some quirks

      

  • Any installed package an have its detail opened from anywhere inside Cork

    • Consequently, if you have Package filtering set to Show only manually installed packages, you can access the hidden dependency by right-clicking it in the Dependencies list, and opening its detail through the context menu action

      

  • The way to preview packages has been unified everywhere to be a right-click, context menu action instead of sometimes being its own dedicated button (like was the case in the package installation dialog)

• New first-party Homebrew tap management:

  • Uses Speakeasy by Graham Hall to further decouple Cork from Homebrew

  • Currently supports two first-party Homebrew taps: homebrew/core and homebrew/cask

  • Loading of tap details is now almost three times as fast

  • Taps that use Speakeasy have a special badge

    

• New screens for processes that included unexpected outputs

  • For example, package installation:

    

  • Differentiates between likely successful processes (those that didn’t include errors), and likely failed processes (those that did include errors)

  • Every process supports these

• Much better UI for the Maintenance results report

  

• Unsuccessful partial package updates now list every failed package, and the reason why it failed. In this case, the reasons are too long to be displayed, and can be accessed by the i button

  

• Real-time outputs now include a timestamp

  

• Every package with a bound version (for example, python@3.14) now consistently displays everywhere with a custom lock icon, instead of random places still showing it as python@3.14
  

• Progress bars now follow build-in macOS text conventions, with main text on top of the bar, with supplementary text under

  

• All sheets now follow the macOS sheet titling convention by having a title separated by a divider

  

• You can now open installed Casks through their Detail page by right-clicking on the Installed as icon

  

Fixes

• Migrated packages preventing package loading #613

• Updates on startup failing with a cryptic JSON message #625

  

• Some harmless outputs being incorrectly identified as errors

• Decreased RAM usage by up to 12%

• Fixed almost all stuttering caused by package reloading

• All progress bars have been replaced to fix the various inconsistent behaviors and incorrect progress reporting #331, #329

• Some non-streaming commands randomly not returning any output, for example the information loader for the php package and the majority of third-party taps #622

• brew doctor not reporting results correctly #538, #397

• Updating process showed “errors” in results even though no errors occurred #541, #595

• Modifying services (turning them on and off) didn’t reflect in the UI and the service had to be closed and re-opened

• For users that didn’t have the “SF Symbols“ app installed, icons that were parts of other strings are now displayed as the actual icons, instead of question marks inside boxes

• Loading of some tap details didn’t work

• Switching from a Cask detail to a Formula detail would show the executable for the last opened Cask as the executable for the currently-opened Formula #655

• Quickly switching between package details would not load the package detail, and a restart would be required

• Fixed flashing text of some sheets when opening

• Text in other languages that is not translated yet now falls back to English, instead of shoring the raw key (like sheet.title)

• Pinned packages can no longer be updated by right-clicking on them

Adjustments

• New Terminal output matcher that is generic, much more robust, and easier to extend and modify

  • Support for reporting unimplemented and unexpected outputs, giving you an overview of what exactly the various workflows did instead of silently failing, or reporting the wrong results

  • Faster matching all across the board

• With the new Terminal output matcher, the whole backend was rewritten from scratch, including:

  • Package installation #599

  • Tap management #598

  • Updating, both complete and incremental #608 #607

• A list of packages in a tap now shows the first few packages, and a complete list can be opened in a new window

  • Searching in the list in the main Cork window still searches through all packages

    

• New icon for “Preview“ & “Open detail“

  

• Increased padding around outlined views for better readability

  

• Custom Tap Hosts can now be specified directly in the tap addition dialog, instead of the process first having to fail to offer the option

  

• New icon for Casks to make it easier to distinguish at smaller sizes (for an upcoming feature in another release…)

  

• Unified subtitle look for outdated and adoptable package sections on the Start Page

  

• The exclamation mark for marking errors in outputs now on the top right of the output line

  

• Select downloading stages include a non-determinate progress bar to make it not seem like long downloads were stuck

  

• New color for the Already installed tag

  

• Dependants are now a fully-fledged dropdown

  

…and probably many more changes, fixes and adjustments I can’t remember

That concludes the list of the most important changes in this release.

If you’d like to support AI-free development of quality software, please consider buying a license to keep Cork alive in the age of cheap slop.

Buy Cork for 25€

Cork Community

Follow Cork:

• Cork on Mastodon

• Cork on BlueSky

Join the Community

• Cork on Discord

• Cork (Rikidar) Forums

See the Code

• Cork on GitHub

• Cork on Rikidar Code

• Cork on Codeberg

NO AI USED, EVER

As always, no AI is used at any point in the development of Cork, and we stand by that with Cork’s strict no AI policy, which remains among one of the strictest in the space.

Additions

• More prominent workflow for defining a custom host for a tap

  

• Badge for taps that use Speakeasy by Graham Hall for tap management

• More efficient package detection algorithm to fix almost all stuttering throughout Cork when packages were changed, or background updates triggered

  • Before:

  • After:

• Various under-the-hood optimizations, leading to a 12% decrease in general RAM usage

Fixes

• Added missing icon for “Remove tap“ button

  

Adjustments

• New icon for Casks to make it easier to distinguish at smaller sizes (for an upcoming feature in another release…)

  

• Unified subtitle look for outdated and adoptable package sections on the Start Page

  

How to Get the Release Candidate

Download the Release Candidate on GitHub (marked as Beta 5): https://github.com/buresdv/Cork/releases/tag/v2.0.0-PUB-BETA-5

Cork Community

Follow Cork:

• Cork on Mastodon

• Cork on BlueSky

Join the Community

• Cork on Discord

• Cork (Rikidar) Forums

See the Code

• Cork on GitHub

• Cork on Rikidar Code

• Cork on Codeberg

NO AI USED

As always, no AI is used at any point in the development of Cork, and we stand by that with Cork’s strict no AI policy, which remains among one of the strictest in the space.

• GitHub

• Codeberg

• Email

If there are no more bugs reported, the next release will be the official 2.0.0 release.

Fixed Known Bugs

• Australian English had missing localizations

• App badge displaying the number of outdated packages was not shown nor was being updated

Fixed Previously Unreported Bugs

• Services

  • Opening a service would often not work

  • Closing a service and returning to the Service overview didn’t work at all

  • Starting and stopping a service would not update the service’s detail properly

• Maintenance

  • brew doctor step in Maintenance wasn't showing any errors, and the errors were not copyable

• Tap Details

  • The list of displayable packages in a tap is truncated because of a SwiftUI bug that blocks Lists from being scrolled when they’re inside a Form

    • To see all packages, click the new “Show more“ button

      

    • Added a new sub-window for seeing the complete list of packages available from a tap

      

    • Search in the main window still searches through all available packages, even if they’re not displayed at first

• Some buttons didn’t have icons

  

• Icons

  • For users that didn’t have the “SF Symbols“ app installed, icons that were parts of other strings are now displayed as the actual icons, instead of question marks inside boxes

Additions

• Any package can now be previewed from anywhere inside Cork, not just in select places

• Likewise, any installed package an have its detail opened from anywhere inside Cork, apart from the package list for a Tap (WIP, coming in a later minor release)

Changes

• New icon for “Preview“ & “Open detail“

  

• Increased padding around outlined views

  

How to Get the Beta

Download the Beta on GitHub: https://github.com/buresdv/Cork/releases/tag/v2.0.0-PUB-BETA-4

• GitHub

• Codeberg

• Email

If there are no more bugs reported, the next release will be the official 2.0.0 release.

Fixed Known Bugs

• Taps

  • Taps are still hit-or-miss whether they load.

    • You can report problems with loading third-party taps (those that don’t start with homebrew), but be sure to include both Cork’s logs, and the information as provided by Homebrew through the Terminal

    • First-party taps (those that do start with homebrew) don’t load at all

• Sheets

  • Some sheets have the wrong button label for closing them - for most, it’s “Cancel” instead of a more contextual label

What not to report - Known bugs

There are no more known bugs caused by the update!

Fixed Previously Unreported Bugs

• Installation process

  • If there was only one error, and that error was unimplemented, the install process would incorrectly be considered successful

  • Installation was not cancellable

• Taps

  • First-party taps that were not homebrew/core or homebrew/cask incorrectly displayed information about the homebrew/cask repo instead of their own information

Fixed Bugs from Tracker

• While not confirmed, a possible fix for incorrectly migrated packages causing the loading to fail is implemented in this release (#613)

• Feature parity with previous Formula install process (#621)

• Some non-streaming commands randomly not returning any output, for example the information loader for the php package and the majority of third-party taps (#622)

• Some progress bars (namely the one for installing packages) jumping too much on first state change (#331)

• And a few smaller bugs

In a nutshell, over 15 bugs are no longer open!

How to Get the Beta

Download the Beta on GitHub: https://github.com/buresdv/Cork/releases/tag/v2.0.0-PUB-BETA-3

Additional Opinion Poll

With this hopefully being the last beta before the final release, I’d appreciate a quick response to this poll to know if you’re happy with the state of 2.0.0.

Now, Public Beta 2 is out and ready for testing, with important bug fixes.

As before, test everything you can think of, and if you find bugs that are not listed below, report them through:

• GitHub

• Codeberg

• Email

• Mastodon

• Bluesky

Fixed Known Bugs

Since the previous release, these bugs have been fixed:

• Maintenance

  • The button “Delete Cached Downloads“ on the Start Page doesn’t correctly select the “Delete cached downloads“ checkbox

  • Deleting cached downloads doesn’t correctly report how much space was freed - the report will always show “You reclaimed Zero kB“

• Install process

  • Unimplemented Formula errors don’t show up

Fixed Previously Unreported Bugs

These bugs that were not reported in the previous release were fixed:

• Maintenance

  • Settings

    • Settings pane for Maintenance was invisible

    • “Set default steps“ was not saving nor correctly checking the maintenance steps

New Bugs

There are no known new bugs in this release

What not to report - Known bugs

These known bugs remain from the previous Public Beta:

• Taps

  • Taps are still hit-or-miss whether they load.

    • You can report problems with loading third-party taps (those that don’t start with homebrew), but be sure to include both Cork’s logs, and the information as provided by Homebrew through the Terminal

    • First-party taps (those that do start with homebrew) don’t load at all

• Sheets

  • Some sheets have the wrong button label for closing them - for most, it’s “Cancel” instead of a more contextual label

• Package loading

  • Synchronizing packages following changes like updates, etc. is pretty slow for the time being due to a lot of debug logging for the purposes of testing the release

How to get the Beta

Download the Beta on GitHub: https://github.com/buresdv/Cork/releases/tag/v2.0.0-PUB-BETA-2

Everything. There is nothing that wasn’t rewritten, improved, or changed. Test everything you can think of, and if you find bugs that are not listed below, report them through:

• GitHub

• Codeberg

• Email

• Mastodon

• Bluesky

What not to report - Known bugs

These bugs will be fixed in the final version - remember, this is a beta, and bugs are expected.

• Taps

  • Taps are still hit-or-miss whether they load.

    • You can report problems with loading third-party taps (those that don’t start with homebrew), but be sure to include both Cork’s logs, and the information as provided by Homebrew through the Terminal

    • First-party taps (those that do start with homebrew) don’t load at all

• Maintenance

  • The button “Delete Cached Downloads“ on the Start Page doesn’t correctly select the “Delete cached downloads“ checkbox

  • Deleting cached downloads doesn’t correctly report how much space was freed - the report will always show “You reclaimed Zero kB“

• Install process

  • Unimplemented Formula errors don’t show up

• Sheets

  • Some sheets have the wrong button label for closing them - for most, it’s “Cancel” instead of a more contextual label

• Package loading

  • Synchronizing packages following changes like updates, etc. is pretty slow for the time being due to a lot of debug logging for the purposes of testing the release

How to get the Beta

For now, you can find it on GitHub as a beta release: https://github.com/buresdv/Cork/releases/tag/v2.0.0-PUB-BETA-1

Happy testing!

Fixes:

• Few incorrect associations for adoptable packages

• Wrong packages listed in the “New updates available“ notification

• Some ignorable errors not getting ignored during package updating

• Adoptable packages can now have multiple “Adoption Candidates“

  • For packages that share the same executable (Zen.app for both the Zen Browser, and Zen Privacy screen), you can now select which package to adopt the app as. Previously, only the first one in the list was chosen, which led to some weirdness.

  • This also allows you to choose if you’d like to install a different bound version - for example, a beta or an older version of the package

• Adoptable and excluded adoptable packages now have search fields which you can use to filter out adoptable packages

  • The search field works for:

    • Adoptable app executables

      

    • Cask names

      

    • Descriptions

      

  • The search field is hidden by default, and you can show it by clicking the magnifying glass button in the list’s header

    

Fixes

• A few small fixes in the app icon, by GenuCoder (#567). Thank you!

Adjustments

• None in this release

On Cork’s infrastructure

Especially recently, I started really disliking centralized internet infrastructure. GitHub is mired in its own slew of controversies. I also just dislike the USA.

Which is why in the future, Cork will be moved by my self-hosted code repo at https://code.rikidar.eu (not accessible yet), with a mirror to Codeberg.

More in-depth communication will be moved to a new dedicated self-hosted forum at https://forum.rikidar.eu, and instant communications to also self-hosted chat infrastructure (not available yet). This blog will also move from Substack, to self-hosted Ghost in the future, with no changes to the URL.

Stay tuned for more information, and follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky. You should also join the current Discord community.

• You can now exclude adoptable apps. The apps you exclude will not longer show up in the list, and are instead moved to a separate list
  

  • You can optionally set whether the entire section should not get shown at all in case you have excluded all adoptable apps. This setting is in Discoverability → App Adoption

    • The section automatically shows up again when a new adoptable app is found

Fixes

None in this release

Adjustments

• New app icon by GenuWonderer! This new icon includes all features added in Tahoe, including Liquid Glass and custom color adjustments, including a dark color theme for the first time, and other adjustments.

• Adoptable packages are the flagship new feature in this release, bringing this much-requested feature to the users of Cork for the first time. Now, Cork sees which apps you have installed outside of Homebrew, and offers to add the to Homebrew for you - after you do, you can manage them as any other Homebrew app, and have Homebrew update them.

  

  • You can right-click the adoptable app to show additional actions: revealing the app executable in Finder, and previewing its cask

  

  • You can select as many apps you’d like to add at a time. Before the process starts, you get an option to change your mind

  • This feature is entirely custom-made and extremely performant, and is an integral part of my Spirytus project: an effort to rewrite all Homebrew systems in Swift for massive performance and efficiency gains, and to decouple Cork from the often buggy Homebrew base and its toxic developers

• Casks now show the actual app that the cask installed

  

  • You can right-click on the app icon to reveal the app in Finder

  

Fixes

• Cask details now show the size of the actual app, instead of just its Homebrew metadata

• Renames packages no longer shop up as broken. A more comprehensive support for them is coming in a future release

Adjustments

• Updated Cork for the Tahoe Liquid Glass design

• Buttons for adding taps and installing packages have new icons

  

• The Settings window now animates when changing panes, like first-party Apple apps

• Added icons to relevant buttons

• Removal of the —no-quarantine flag from the install command in order to cope with another unannounced change to Homebrew

• changed Cork’s bundle ID from `com.davidbures.cork` to `eu.davidbures.cork`. This means that your settings might be reset this one time, and you may have to put in your email one more time

• bumped the min. system version from macOS 13 to 14. I already outlined the plan last year, and reminded everyone last month, and now, it’s time to make the switch. There are a lot of new things in SwiftUI that are not available for macOS 13 that make the experience of using the app much better

You can keep using the current Cork cask, I added a separate binary to it for macOS 13 in the last update.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at dev@corkmac.app and I will do my best to assist.

Additions

• Nothing new in this release

Fixes

• Fixed the “return to status page“ sometimes being greyed out when some package details were open

• Moved configuration from `AppStorage` to the `Defaults` library for a much more robust way of storing settings, which won’ need to be reset in the future like in this release

• Fixed occasional crashing of the preview pane when opened from somewhere that’s not the package installation sheet

• Fixed a soft lock with removing a package while the detail pane is being switched to another package

• Shortcut action for loading installed packages on macOS versions newer than 14 no longer crashes Shortcuts

Adjustments

• Migrated from `ObservedObject` to `Observable` for big performance gains

• Navigation is managed by its own object for better control and performance

• A few adjustments to the sizing of large buttons

• Tagged packages are no longer saved in a `.brewmeta` file in the Documents folder, but in the system’s built-in SwiftData

• Loading of tagged and pinned packages is now faster, because it takes place right in the function for loading the packages themselves, instead of looping over the loaded packages and applying the proper statuses to them after they have been already loaded

These languages are:

• Korean

• French

• German

• Traditional Chinese

If you speak any of these languages, I’d appreciate it greatly if you’d take the languages over. To do so, join the Discord, give yourself the Linguist role and head to the `#localization` channel. You will find more info in the channel’s description. Alternatively, check out the Contributing Translations section on GitHub.

Additions

• Updated Italian and Spanish translations

Read this before you start panicking:

Additions

• Pinning packages from the sidebar. I rewrote the system for pinning packages completely from scratch, because the Homebrew implementation was way too slow

  

• Button for manually checking for outdated packages

  

• Package detail pane now fully supports package deprecation notes

Fixes

• Crash when opening some previews

• Backup date format omitted doesn't actually omit date (#499)

• Wrong sizing of update and maintenance sheets (#493)

Adjustments

• Package statuses, which include whether a package is outdated and pinned, changed to a badge on the right side of the sidebar item

  

• Caveats for packages (called “notes“ in Cork) have a new design

  

• Changed icon for updating packages, the old icon is now for looking for new outdated packages

  

  
  
  
  
  

Additions

• New states for empty package searches

• Updating packages from sidebar (#375)

  

• New settings for default backup date formats. Supports every macOS date format and includes a preview (#447)

Fixes

• Fixed a crash when previewing packages (#479)

• Fixed a compilation error related to Shortcuts (#475)

Adjustments

• A few under-the-hood adjustments for the way packages are updated

Before I sign off, you might have read this post I published on Bluesky and Mastodon:

I have not been doing well mentally, due to a lot of stress from my private life, and trying to market Cork with little outside help. I have never been good at marketing, because I know how annoying it can get.

So I’d like to ask you to share Cork, write about it, post about it… You can also join the Cork Discord (linked below) to hang out.

Thank you.

Get Cork

Join the Discord

Additions

• Support for packages that require the greedy flag, meaning those that update themselves

  • This is disabled by default, and has to be enabled in Settings under Packages → Show packages not managed by Homebrew

  • Once enabled, you will start seeing “Unmanaged“ packages in your outdated package list

  • Unmanaged packages are defined in the app’s own configuration. These packages are supposed to have their own, internal updating mechanism, independent of Homebrew

• You now get the option to automatically accept package EULAs (by Grublady)

Fixes

• Updating individual packages no longer throws the Could not synchronize packages error (#382)

• The Service Manager no longer crashes when clicking the Reload button when no services are installed (#471)

Adjustments

• Various translations have been updated

Get Cork

Join the Discord

• Fails when attempting to update when a package requires input

The bounty for implementing it is 100€

Cork Open Collective

Cork has a page on Open Collective! All proceeds made from it are redistributed among the contributors.

After a few months, we finally have a new update for Cork, due to my quite bad mental health.

Additions

• Top packages have descriptions (thanks to Grublady)

  

• Turkish translation (thanks to okturan)

• Alerts for misconfigured taps

• Errors encountered during package loading are now displayed as a list of errors, with the recommended fix. This means that more than one error at a time can be shown

  

• Optional swipe actions in the sidebar

Fixes

• The entire package loading process has been rewritten from scratch, making it much more robust

• Pressing Return when adding a tap actually works now

• Some packages were missing their compatibility listings in the package definition. This used to break the decoding process, but now, it doesn’t anymore (thanks to Grublady)

Adjustments

• Buttons in the toolbar now follow Apple’s semantic placements

• Sheets now use the new built-in button and title design

There are probably a lot other additions and fixes I have not mentioned, but this release has been in development for a long time, and I don’t remember everything that I did.

Thank you for your support. I’d really appreciate if you’d spread the word about Cork.

You should follow me on Bluesky and Mastodon to keep up with Cork news.

Get Cork

Join the Discord

By keeping Cork on macOS 13, it’s missing out on a lot of SwiftUI improvements, such as Observation (which dramatically speeds up UI updates) and Swift Data (which can be used to persist data, like tagged packages, in a native way).

So, at some point, I will have to drop macOS 13. What will happen to Cork on that system when that happens?

Do not panic!

Dropping support for a system version does NOT mean that Cork will stop working on that version. Quite contrary.

All it means is that in the future, a version of Cork will come out for macOS 13, and that will be the final version for that system version. It will keep working indefinitely, in accordance with Cork’s license.

It will just not receive any further updates. That’s all there is to it.

So, when will that happen?

I’m not sure yet. Like I write above, I’m doing my very best to keep Cork on macOS 13, even if it means missing out on essential SwiftUI features.

However, I might implement a feature that’s just not possible on macOS 13. And if I don’t figure out a workaround, I’ll fix up as many problems in that version I can, and then release it as a “final“ macOS 13 version, so users still on macOS 13 will have as good of an experience with that final version for the system as possible.

• Fails when attempting to update when a package requires input

The bounty for implementing it is 100€

This will be a short post because I’m on vacation until September 30th, and I want some peace until then.

I have added a package preview button, which you can press when you want to see information about a package that has not been installed yet:

Other changes can be found on the GitHub project: https://github.com/users/buresdv/projects/2

Get Cork

Join the Forums

Join the Discord

• Fails when attempting to update when a package requires input

The bounty for implementing it is 100€

Cork Open Collective

Cork has a page on Open Collective! All proceeds made from it are redistributed among the contributors.

Additions

• New options for showing outdated packages

• Multiple new errors have been handled in Services

• New workflow for updating Homebrew inside Cork

• Support for unexpectedly interrupted package instalations

• Maintenance is also accessible from a new, optional toolbar button

  

• New button in Services for manually reloading the list of services

Fixes

• Loading status for outdated packages on Status Page sometimes doesn't correctly update when updates finished being checked

• A few more misc fixes that I didn’ write down

Adjustments

• SwiftyJSON was completely removed, as all JSON parsing was migrated to JSONDecoder

Get Cork

Join the Forums

Join the Discord

• Fails when attempting to update when a package requires input

The bounty for implementing it is 100€

Additions

• Outdated packages can be seen directly in the sidebar. They have a clock icon next to their name

  

Fixes

• Right-clicking on sidebar items hangs for a second

• Switching displayable packages does not properly update the dock badge

• Some Casks were not showing in the outdated package list

Adjustments

• Converted from SwiftyJSON to native JSONDecoder:

  • Services

  • Top packages

  • Outdated packages

• French translation updated

Get Cork

Join the Forums

Join the Discord