til/brew/clean-up-your-brew-installations.md

Clean Up Your Brew Installations

Over time as you upgrade brew-installed programs and make changes to your Brewfile, your machine will have artifacts left behind that you no longer need.

Periodically, it is good to clean things up.

First, you can get a summary of stale and outdated files that brew has installed. Use the --dry-run flag.

$ brew cleanup --dry-run

If you feel good about what you see in the output, then give things a clean.

$ brew cleanup

Second, if you are using a Brewfile to manage what brew installs, then you can instruct brew to uninstall any dependencies that aren't specified in that file.

By default it operates as a dry run and the --force flag will be needed to actually do the cleanup. And specify the filename if it doesn't match the default of Brewfile.

$ brew bundle cleanup --file=Brewfile.personal

If the output looks good, then force the cleanup:

$ brew bundle cleanup --force --file=Brewfile.personal

See brew cleanup --help and brew bundle --help for more details.