What We Did in 2025
Published on December 24, 2025 by Sean Molenaar
Another exciting year packed with major releases, foundational infrastructure improvements, cross-platform advancements, and continued enhancements that make package management on macOS and Linux smoother for everyone.
🚀 Major Releases
🎉 Homebrew 5.0.0 — 12 November 2025
2025 culminated in Homebrew 5.0.0, a landmark release that sets the stage for the next era of the project. This release brought:
- Download concurrency by default — parallel downloads enabled out of the box for faster installs and upgrades.
- Official Tier 1 support for Linux ARM64/AArch64 — reflecting Homebrew’s growing Linux adoption.
- Support timelines for future macOS versions — including official support for macOS 26 (Tahoe) and deprecation plans for older macOS and Intel builds.
- Deprecations — including codesigning requirements for casks and removal of some quarantine flags to align with modern security expectations.
Homebrew 4.6.0 — 5 August 2025
Homebrew 4.6.0 delivered features that gently paved the way toward the 5.x milestone:
- Opt-in download concurrency, giving users a performance boost before it became the default.
- Built-in brew mcp-server, a new service component included in Homebrew itself.
- Preliminary support for macOS 26 (Tahoe) ahead of Apple’s release.
- Important updates for repositories, tapping, environment variables, and tighter URL handling.
Homebrew 4.5.0 — 29 April 2025
Homebrew 4.5.0 focused on tooling and ecosystem growth:
- Major improvements to brew bundle and brew services, including enhanced documentation and new DSL for Brewfiles.
- Linux support for casks (preliminary), expanding what Homebrew can manage on non-macOS systems.
- Official Support Tiers and expanded Linux ARM64 support.
- Ruby 3.4 upgrade and several planned deprecations.
🔐 Infrastructure & Security Improvements
Homebrew's New Governance Structure - 1 December 2025
Homebrew adopted an updated governance model that replaces the legacy PLC and TSC with a simpler, contribution-driven structure. The previous model had unclear responsibilities in practice and placed most governance work on a small number of active contributors regardless of formal roles. The new model aligns decision-making and elevated access with ongoing contribution, strengthens Homebrew’s security posture, and provides clearer expectations for all maintainers. It follows the long-standing open-source principle of “they who do the work, decide.”
Homebrew’s New Git Signing Key — 3 February 2025
Early in the year, Homebrew announced a shift in its repository signing infrastructure: transitioning from PGP-based signing to SSH-based signing for automated commits (e.g. by BrewTestBot). This helps modernise how Homebrew’s source history is authenticated and verified during contribution flows.
🛠️ Ecosystem and Community Trends
While not a part of the releases we announced in blog posts, 2025 also saw continued community growth and contributions to the Homebrew commandline and formulae, and casks (visible in GitHub releases and contributor lists).
Homebrew had a strong team representing us at both GitHub Universe and FOSDEM this year, and we're looking forward to meeting our users again at next year's conferences. We will once again have a stand at FOSDEM and hold our AGM in Brussels afterwards.
📈 Looking Ahead
2025 was all about performance, broadening platform coverage, and preparing Homebrew for the future of macOS and Linux software management. With major releases and architectural shifts, the project is well-positioned to continue serving developers in 2026 and beyond.
Here’s to brewing faster, safer and smarter! 🍻