Applite

Any application that can be found in the Homebrew Catalog is available on Applite. Use the search function to find all applications in Applite.

The macOS built-in protection (Gatekeeper and XProtect) will scan the application for potential malware the first time you open it and notify you if anything is suspicious. Also, most applications in the Homebrew Catalog are notarized, which means they come from a registered developer.

The apps may not be sandboxed, which allows them to affect your system with elevated privileges. Nevertheless, be careful, as some applications may contain malware, especially those that have few downloads. Applite itself is also not sandboxed.

None.

Yes, you can. The first time you open the application, you will be asked if you want to use your own brew or if you want to create a new installation just for Applite.

If you choose to create a new installation it will be stored at: ~/Library/Application Support/Applite/homebrew.

If you chose to use your existing brew installation all casks installed with it will appear in Applite.

Any other apps installed manually (e.g. from DMG or PKG files) will not show up as installed in Applite. You can add them by reinstalling them. See troubleshooting page for more information on adding already installed apps.

App icons are retrieved from the appcasks repository which is part of the Appfair project. If no icon is available, the app's website favicon will be displayed. The favicon is retrieved using the Icon Horse API.

Some applications require the user's admin password to install. Brew asks for the password via the CLI, which is not accessible from the GUI by default. PINEntry provides a GUI prompt that we can use to enter the password, for now this seems to be the most secure option available.

For technical details, see the related GitHub issue.

Applite only works on macOS Ventura (13) or later. This is because Apple only releases new software features for the latest version of their OS, even though they could clearly work on older systems. This makes things difficult for developers, who either have to write a lot of workarounds or drop support for older versions of the OS. As a solo developer working on this project, I chose to drop support for older versions rather than spend hours on complicated workarounds. (And please don't blame developers for being lazy, we are human beings just like you, blame Apple instead for making it impossible to use new features on older OS versions)

Yes. Applite uses the system proxy settings. It supports HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5.