I Don’t Use the Mac App Store Anymore
Blame Claude Code
For years the Mac App Store was just where I got apps. Unless they weren’t in the Store.
Straightforward. You search, you click, it downloads. Apple handles updates. Everything tidy and official. Sandbox safety.
I never questioned it much. It was just the Mac way of doing things.
Then I started spending more time in Terminal (again) because of Claude Code and AI coding.
Now, I rarely download apps from the App Store or Websites.
Terminal back again
AI coding sort of goes hand in hand with the comeback of the terminal. At least for me. I used the terminal a lot 15 years ago at university. For coding and other things.
Since then, almost never.
That changed a lot the past few months. Mostly because of Claude Code.
If you’ve used Claude Code for any serious amount of time, you probably know what I mean.
You’re in Terminal a lot. The Claude app is fine too, but the terminal just works more smoothly, robustly, and less RAM-hungry.
Running commands, watching output scroll, getting comfortable with the interface is fun. What used to feel like a developer-only space starts feeling completely normal for a lot of people.
That’s cool.
And once Terminal feels normal, you start noticing how powerful it really is combined with AI.
So, now, for app, I mainly use Homebrew instead of app stores or websites to download apps.
What Homebrew is
Homebrew is a package manager for macOS.
Instead of going to a website, downloading a .dmg file, dragging it to Applications, and occasionally remembering to update it, you just type a command.
brew install rectangleDone. Rectangle is installed. Pretty cool app, by the way.
Want to update every single app you’ve installed via Homebrew?
brew upgradeOne command. Everything current. No clicking through update dialogs one by one. No opening the App Store and waiting for the spinning wheel to figure out which of your apps have updates.
It’s faster than the app stores in every way.
Claude Code accelerated this
If you use AI coding daily, installing things via the terminal makes a lot of sense.
What you need to set up for Claude Code to work well, goes through Terminal. Node. Git. Python environments. Various CLI tools. None of that lives in the Mac App Store. Some of it doesn’t even have “real” apps, by that I mean with a UI to click through, etc.
So, if you’re deep into Claude Code, you probably end up in Homebrew anyway for the developer tooling. And once you’re there, once you’ve typed brew install a few times and seen how fast and clean it is, going back to the App Store for your regular apps feels… wrong.
Why am I opening a GUI to install something, when I can just type one line and it’s there?
What Homebrew does
The App Store only has what Apple has approved, of course. That’s a fairly strict list. It’s good in some ways. Mainly safety and security. It’s restricting in a lot of others.
Homebrew has basically everything. Apps that Apple would never approve because they touch parts of macOS that the App Store sandbox doesn’t allow. Apps that developers sell directly and don’t bother with the App Store cut. Tools that only exist as command-line utilities and have no GUI at all.
Also tools that are actually paid when you want the GUI version, but are free on Homebrew. Really cool!
Some of the best Mac apps are Homebrew-only or available there before they hit the App Store.
Homebrew can also handle GUI apps if you need them. For this, you use cask.
The cask system specifically handles GUI apps — brew install --cask appname — so it’s not just for developer tools. It’s for any app. And you’ll be surprised how many you’ll find in Homebrew.
The update situation is fantastic. brew upgrade handles everything. No app-specific update dialogs. No “this app wants to make changes” popups. Just a list of what got updated and done.
What I still use the App Store for
Apps that are App Store-only, and apps tied to my Apple ID for family sharing or purchase history.
Apps where I’ve already paid, and they live in my Apple account. Productivity apps that use iCloud sync and are specifically built around that ecosystem.
Also, the App Store’s sandboxing is not a bad thing. An App Store app has limited access to your system by design. For apps where that matters, it’s a reasonable safety layer.
But for most of my daily tools, Homebrew is where I go first now.
The learning curve is shorter than it looks
“Use Terminal” sounds like advice aimed at developers.
It’s not, really, anymore. If you can type brew install followed by an app name, you can use Homebrew. The Homebrew website has a one-line install command. After that, most things are just brew install [whatever].
There’s a search on the Homebrew site where you can check if an app is available. Most of the time it is. If it’s a GUI app, you add --cask to the command.
That’s about 80% of what you actually need to know.
The other 20% you pick up gradually, and honestly a lot of it I’ve learned through Claude Code sessions where Homebrew commands just show up naturally as part of the workflow.
The Bottom Line
The Mac App Store is great. It’s not going anywhere, and I still use it.
But Homebrew is faster, has more, and once you’re in Terminal regularly anyway, it’s the lower-friction path for most things.
Claude Code got me into Terminal again. Terminal got me into Homebrew again. Homebrew replaced the App Store for most of my app management.
And Claude Code can automate any of this as well. Download apps, update, use them for coding, tooling, and more.
Pretty ideal.