Homebrew 7.0.0 ships with faster installs, built-in vulnerability checks and Intel Macs moved to Tier 3

Homebrew 7.0.0 arrived on 13 September 2026, announced by maintainer Mike McQuaid as the biggest update since 6.0.0. The release speeds up package installs and upgrades, tightens sandboxing, adds an official macOS application, builds vulnerability checking into the package manager itself, and ends support for macOS 10.15 Catalina. Intel Macs move to Tier 3.

Faster installs, fewer waits

brew install, brew reinstall and brew upgrade now overlap package preparation with downloads, including batches driven by a Brewfile, cutting the pause between packages. brew config collects independent system details in parallel, while brew fetch reads download information straight from API metadata for bottles and casks instead of loading complete package definitions just to discover URLs and checksums. brew cleanup avoids repeated cache scans, and Homebrew launches fewer subprocesses at startup and reuses parsed API data on warm runs, still verifying signatures on every load.

Security: eight advisories and a new advisory database

The release notes list eight security advisories. The most serious, rated High and fixed in 6.0.12, involved unsigned cask-removal metadata that could execute commands with sudo; the vulnerable recovery code has been deleted. A Moderate flaw fixed in 7.0.0 let a malicious cask run code outside the macOS install sandbox through LaunchServices, so Homebrew now restricts application launching, Mach services and Unix socket connections. Another Moderate issue, also fixed in 6.0.12, saw the macOS installer ignore prefix-owned Git configuration that could execute programs as root.

Homebrew also ships an advisory database and the built-in brew vulns command, which checks installed formulae against OSV.dev data without extra taps or gems and can prioritise remediation by severity and by whether a fix already exists. Its OSV-format records are published under CC0.

macOS 10.15 dropped, Intel Macs to Tier 3

macOS 10.15 and earlier are removed, and macOS Sonoma 14 drops to Tier 3. Intel x86_64 macOS becomes Tier 3 in September 2026, a decision announced in August 2025 and repeated in the 5.0.0 notes after Apple dropped Intel support from macOS 27 Golden Gate and GitHub Actions said it will retire Intel macOS runners in autumn 2027. Homebrew still runs on Intel until September 2027, but without project support or routine bottle builds, and the .pkg installer is now Apple Silicon only, requiring macOS Sequoia 15 or later.

On macOS, brew install homebrew-app installs BrewUI, the project's official graphical interface, which browses packages and shows the underlying brew commands. On Linux, Homebrew replaces Bubblewrap sandboxing with Landlock, which needs no dependencies or escalated Docker permissions; kernels without Landlock keep running in the less secure pre-6.0.0 configuration, with brew doctor flagging the missing protection.