Our favorite Homebrew casks

Most people think of Homebrew as the place you go for CLI tools like git, wget, node. But there are over 6,000 Casks too, making it one of the best ways to manage the Mac apps you use every day. We asked the Workbrew crew which ones have earned a permanent spot in their setups. Here are 11 to add to your Brewfile.

What's a cask? Homebrew formulae install command-line tools and libraries. Casks install macOS GUI applications, like Zoom, Slack, or your terminal emulator. The same brew install command works for both, which is the whole point: one tool, everything on your Mac, one command to keep it all up to date.

Remap any key on your keyboard#

Carlo found karabiner-elements the way most Vim users do: wanting to swap caps lock and escape, then realising it could do considerably more. Any key can be remapped. Complex modifier combinations that don't exist in macOS natively are fair game. And because configuration lives in JSON, syncing across machines is trivial.

Carlo: "Configuration is in JSON, so it's very simple to synchronise across machines."

karabiner-elements: because keyboards should work the way you think, not the way they shipped.

Never miss the start of a meeting again#

meetingbar was a recommendation from John to Petros, to improve time management, helping to be on time for meetings. It shows your next event in the menu bar. But the real feature is the full-screen modal that takes over your screen a few minutes before a call. It’s configurable, hard to ignore, and apparently very effective.

Petros: "It shows a modal that takes over your whole screen 3 minutes before a meeting. It is the best way to never miss a meeting again."

meetingbar: the one app that has actually fixed the "sorry, just joining" problem.

Inspect app signing before you trust it#

David brings a security-minded set of picks. First up: apparency, from Mothers Ruin Software (excellent name). Press spacebar on any .app file and Quick Look becomes a full code signing inspection, showing notarization status, entitlements, everything. No codesign output required. For anyone who needs to preview signing quickly, or go deeper on components, it's hard to beat.

apparency: quickly inspect app trust without the command line.

Dissect installer packages before they run#

The companion to Apparency suspicious-package, also from Mothers Ruin, does the same job for .pkg installers. Browse every script, file, and component before anything runs. If you want to know what you're installing before you install it — and on managed Macs, you should — this is the tool.

David: "These apps allow me to preview app/pkg signing and notarization quickly with Quick Look, or dive in deeper to inspect the components more carefully." 

suspicious-package: because "just double-click and trust it" is rarely the right call.

The screen capture app that just gets it#

Petros's second pick. cleanshot is one of those tools where you wonder how the alternatives ever seemed acceptable. Screenshots, scrolling captures, GIFs, video, all in one place. The interface feels like the team actually thought about every edge case, which sounds obvious but apparently isn't.

Petros "Its product team must be one of the best teams out there, it's as if they know exactly how a screen capturing app should work. Wild right?"

cleanshot: for the moments when cmd+shift+4 simply isn't enough.

Debug iOS app network traffic the easy way#

Browser devtools make it easy to inspect web traffic. iOS apps? Not so much. Kristján uses mitmproxy to close that gap. Set it up as a proxy for your phone, and you can watch every request and response any app makes. He's used it to find security issues he wouldn't have caught any other way.

Kristján: "mitmproxy makes it super easy and has helped me find some wild security issues with apps."

Mitmproxy: the quickest path from "I wonder what this app is sending" to an answer.

GIFs that don't look like GIFs#

For product walkthroughs and feature demos, Luke reaches for gifox. No fiddly settings. No quality compromises. Just record, export, done. The difference between a GIF made with gifox and one cobbled together with a free tool is visible to anyone watching.

gifox: for when a screenshot just won't do.

A menubar organiser that stays out of your way#

Most menubar organisers are more work than they're worth. vanilla isn't. One chevron, click it, hidden items appear. Luke has tried the others, and found them all too fiddly. Worth noting that macOS 27 ships a native overflow system now, but the team reckons Vanilla is still cleaner for moderate overload.

vanilla: simple enough that you forget it's there, which is the whole point.

The menubar replacement that replaced Bartender#

John has opinions about menubar management, and thaw is his current answer. It does what MacBartender used to do, control which icons appear, in what order, when. But it's open source, that became relevant to a lot of people when Bartender changed ownership.

John: "MacBartender was GOAT until the indie dev sold it and it kind of went downhill and some people have privacy concerns. Thaw is open source."

thaw: open-source menubar management, no strings attached.

Git with a UI that actually makes sense#

Before joining Workbrew, Luke worked at GitHub which might explain why github is still his go-to for actual Git work. Even with Git built into every AI tool going. The UI walks you through the commands you forget. Which, for most people, is most of them.

GitHub Desktop: for everyone who's looked up git reset --hard HEAD^ more than once.

Drag-and-drop, but useful#

yoink is genuinely hard to explain until you've used it. Start dragging a file and a small tray appears. You can drop the file there, switch windows, and then drag it out again. It’s like a parking spot for your files. It's a small thing. But missing steps in otherwise smooth workflows add up.

John: "I use this 100s of times a day, drag any file in macos and a magic tray pops up to hold it for you so you can drag and drop it to another app."

yoink: the clipboard, but for files you're in the middle of dragging.

What casks are in your Brewfile?#

With thousands of casks available, there's always something else to discover. We'd love to know what's in yours.

Find us in #workbrew on the MacAdmins Slack, or share your picks on LinkedIn and tag us.

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