How Do I Update Homebrew?

Question

When I ran:

brew update

I got a message saying it initialized an empty repository in /usr/local/.git/, then I got this error:

Accepted Answer

cd /usr/local
git status
Discard all the changes (unless you actually want to try to commit to Homebrew - you probably don't)
git status til it's clean
brew update

Answer 2

As of 2021 you can simply use brew update which updates homebrew itself.

Answer 3

Alternatively you could update brew by installing it again. (Think I did this as El Capitan changed something)

Note: this is a heavy handed approach that will remove all applications installed via brew!

Try to install brew a fresh and it will tell how to uninstall.

At original time of writing to uninstall:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL )"

Edit: As of 2020 to uninstall:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL )"

3 Answers