Install Homebrew on macOS 11 (Apple Silicon)

Tony Lai
2 min readJun 12, 2021

Before install Homebew, make sure your macOS meets the install requirements.

Install Homebrew on macOS 11 (Apple Silicon)

$ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

When downloaded, it will detect your macOS architecture and if it’s Intel, Homebrew will be installed on /usr/local, or /opt/homebrew if macOS is Apple Silicon. Our macOS 11 is Apple Silicon (M1), hence Homebrew will be located at /opt/homebrew.

Install another copy of Homebrew for Intel simulated terminal

For macOS 11 ARM (Apple Silicon), it’s best practice to install a 2nd copy of Homebrew dedicated to running programs that are not yet natively compiled for ARM. The second Homebrew must be installed on /usr/local as recommended from the Alternative Installs option - Untar anywhere, or things would break when install by brew install.

$ cd /usr/local
$ mkdir homebrew && curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew

Using ARM Homebrew and Rosetta Homebrew together

Now when you type brew on the terminal, the native ARM Homebrew is running

$ which brew
/opt/homebrew/bin/brew

$ brew --version
Homebrew 3.1.11
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision 7c34424687; last commit 2021-06-10)
Homebrew/homebrew-cask (git revision ab9a64f927; last commit 2021-06-10)

Edit your ~/.zshrc and put this alias

alias ibrew='arch -x86_64 /usr/local/bin/brew'

Whenever you need to install a package under Rosetta, just use ibrew install ...

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