Software Alternatives & Reviews

Homebrew VS MacDown

Compare Homebrew VS MacDown and see what are their differences

Homebrew logo Homebrew

The missing package manager for macOS

MacDown logo MacDown

MacDown is an open source Markdown editor for OS X, released under the MIT License.
  • Homebrew Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-29
  • MacDown Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

Homebrew videos

Homebrew Review: Coopers Lager - Taste Test

More videos:

  • Review - Homebrew Review | Alchemist Class by Mage Hand Press (featuring Designer Mike Holik)
  • Review - Northern Brewer Cream Ale Homebrew Review Tasting

MacDown videos

BARRAS DE CORTE DA MACDOWN | APRESENTANDO MODs | FS19

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Homebrew and MacDown)
Front End Package Manager
Text Editors
0 0%
100% 100
Windows Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Markdown Editor
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Homebrew and MacDown. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Homebrew seems to be a lot more popular than MacDown. While we know about 877 links to Homebrew, we've tracked only 7 mentions of MacDown. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Homebrew mentions (877)

  • Top Homebrew Alternative: ServBay Becomes the Go-To for Developers
    Homebrew is a highly popular package manager on macOS and Linux systems, enabling users to easily install, update, and uninstall command-line tools and applications. Its design philosophy focuses on simplifying the software installation process on macOS, eliminating the need for manual downloads and compilations of software packages. - Source: dev.to / 12 days ago
  • Tools for Linux Distro Hoppers
    Hopping from one distro to another with a different package manager might require some time to adapt. Using a package manager that can be installed on most distro is one way to help you get to work faster. Flatpak is one of them; other alternative are Snap, Nix or Homebrew. Flatpak is a good starter, and if you have a bunch of free time, I suggest trying Nix. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • SQLite Schema Diagram Generator
    Are you using SQLite that ships with macOS, or SQLite installed from homebrew? I had a different problem in the past with the SQLite that ships with macOS, and have been using SQLite from homebrew since. So if it’s the one that comes with macOS that gives you this problem that you are having, try using SQLite from homebrew instead. https://brew.sh/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • How to install (Ubuntu 22.10 VM) vagrant on Mac M1 ship using QEMU
    Before we begin, make sure you have Homebrew installed on your Mac. Homebrew is a package manager that makes it easy to install software and dependencies. You can install Homebrew by following the instructions on their website: https://brew.sh/. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Perfect Elixir: Environment Setup
    I’m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

MacDown mentions (7)

  • Epub rendering with Pandoc
    I write a LOT of documentation in Markdown for $DAYJOB. I normally use Marked2 (not free, but I paid for my license 7-8 years ago) or MacDown (free) to preview them, and to export them to PDF. Both of these programs are specific to macOS, but a web search for "markdown editor" turns up a few dozen others, for other platforms. Most of these will have an "export to PDF" function built into them. Source: 5 months ago
  • Good Free Application For Reading `.md` Files On Mac Pro
    MacDown is free, open source and super simple. Has been my go-to Markdown editor for years. Highly recommend. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: Is there any beautiful Markdown editor?
    Macdown: https://macdown.uranusjr.com/ And here's a huge list: https://github.com/mundimark/awesome-markdown-editors. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • High probability of conversion issues from PDF to Epub
    So I convert the PDF to Markdown format. Then I use my Markdown editor of choice, Macdown, to clean up the text and then convert the resulting document into the format that I want. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Markdown editor's with a toolbar?
    If you're talking about buttons to help you style your text so you don't have to remember the syntax, then MacDown will have you covered. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Homebrew and MacDown, you can also consider the following products

Chocolatey - The sane way to manage software on Windows.

Typora - A minimal Markdown reading & writing app.

iTerm2 - A terminal emulator for macOS that does amazing things.

Markdown by DaringFireball - Text-to-HTML conversion tool/syntax for web writers, by John Gruber

Visual Studio Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

StackEdit - Full-featured, open-source Markdown editor based on PageDown, the Markdown library used by Stack Overflow and the other Stack Exchange sites.