List of installable Homebrew casks

Question

Is there a way to obtain a list (possibly with descriptions) of all the casks installable with Homebrew Cask?

Solution 1

The new way to list all installable cask packages is:

brew search --casks

The man page for brew has the following information:

search --casks

Display all locally available casks (including tapped ones). No online search is performed.

Solution 2

Brew search now has a --desc flag.

This lists all of them with the description:

brew search --casks --desc ''

Solution 3

List using a browser

1. Visit the website https://formulae.brew.sh/
2. Use * as search string and all the casks will be displayed

---

List using the command line

for cask in $(brew search); do
    brew cask info $cask;
done

Solution 4

Run brew search without argument to list all of them. You won’t get descriptions, thought.

Solution 5

The installable list is 7000+ casks. You, of course, can grep the result.., but more practical is to list some subset of the installable casks using search command:

brew search [YOUR-SEARCH-SUBSTRING]

It will print you 2 groups. The first group will be installable ==> Formulae, if any. The second group will be ==> Casks

---

For example, if you are looking for Beaver DB browser, you can type either:

brew search Beaver

---- Output ----
==> Casks
dbeaver-enterprise   dbeaver-enterprise   swiftybeaver         swiftybeaver

or:

brew search DB

---- Output ----
==> Formulae
ansible-cmdb              dbmate                    lbdb                      [email protected]              questdb
...
==> Casks
1password-beta                             dynamodb-local                             mongodb-compass-readonly
actual-odbc-pack                           dynamodb-local                             mongodbpreferencepane
actual-odbc-pack                           exist-db                                   mongodbpreferencepane
apache-couchdb                             exist-db                                   navicat-for-mariadb
apache-couchdb                             flvcd-bigrats                              navicat-for-mariadb
arq-cloud-backup                           flvcd-bigrats                              nosql-workbench-for-amazon-dynamodb
arq-cloud-backup                           gcollazo-mongodb                           nosql-workbench-for-amazon-dynamodb
db-browser-for-sqlite                      gcollazo-mongodb                           nosqlbooster-for-mongodb
db-browser-for-sqlite                      handbrake                                  nosqlbooster-for-mongodb
dbeaver-community ✔                        handbrake                                  omnidb
dbeaver-community ✔                        handbrake-nightly                          omnidb
dbeaver-enterprise                         handbrakebatch                             rekordbox
dbeaver-enterprise                         handbrakebatch                             rekordbox
dbglass                                    hex-fiend-beta                             soundboosterlite
dbglass                                    macgdbp                                    soundboosterlite
dbkoda                                     macgdbp                                    sql-power-architect-jdbc
dbkoda                                     mongodb-compass                            sql-power-architect-jdbc
dbngin                                     mongodb-compass                            thingsmacsandboxhelper
dbngin                                     mongodb-compass-beta                       thingsmacsandboxhelper
dbschema                                   mongodb-compass-community                  thunderbird-beta
dbschema                                   mongodb-compass-community                  wireshark-chmodbpf
dbvisualizer                               mongodb-compass-isolated-edition           wireshark-chmodbpf
dbvisualizer                               mongodb-compass-isolated-edition
deadbeef-devel                             mongodb-compass-readonly

the ✔ mark indicates installed casks.

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Comments

[sideshowbarker]

Maybe need $(brew cask search | grep -v '==> Partial matches')

[Delicia Brummitt]

For new people finding this page, Per Homebrew: Calling brew cask search is deprecated and will be disabled on 2018-09-30! Use brew search instead

[Delicia Brummitt]

For new people finding this page, Per Homebrew: Calling brew cask search is deprecated and will be disabled on 2018-09-30! Use brew search instead

[bobpaul]

Does formulae.brew.sh show casks? It looks like just packages to me. For example, when I use brew search nextcloud from the command line it indicates there's a nextcloud cask. But when I load the package list on formulae.brew.sh, nextcloud doesn't show up.

[Aaron3219]

Instead of posting your own answer with some modifications you could also edit the answer from another user directly. There should be a small edit button between the share and flag button.

[P A N]

Are you sure Cakebrew supports searching for casks? I tried installing it and I cannot find any such functionality, nor anything on the web to support that claim (at the moment).

[pius]

So what does 'locally available' mean here?

[user1495606]

It's the local formula files which are like the "known packages available for download and installation". you can see them if you ls /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-cask/Cask‌​s then cat any of them to see how their information is stored.

[pius]

Thanks. Assume Homebrew downloads these files when it's updating or otherwise connected online.

[Phil T.]

Homebrew has changed. Following limits to casks: for cask in $(brew search --casks); do brew cask info $cask; done