Questions

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Nothing. Applite is free and open source under the MIT licence, and there is no paid version, no subscription and no account to create.

No. Applite sets itself up the first time you open it, in the background, and it takes a few seconds. There is no setup screen to work through, and you do not need a Terminal or any developer tools. Applite can be the first app you put on a new Mac.

macOS checks every app the first time you open it, using Gatekeeper and XProtect, and warns you if something looks wrong. Most apps you can install through Applite are notarised, meaning Apple has checked them and they come from a registered developer.

Apps from outside the App Store are not sandboxed the way App Store apps are, so they can make changes to your Mac. Install software you recognise, and take more care with apps that very few people use. Applite itself is not sandboxed either.

The app collects nothing. No accounts, no analytics, no telemetry of any kind, and that will not change.

This website is separate and does count visits, using Umami. It sets no cookies and does not identify individual visitors; it records page views and the country they came from. That is how we learned how many people use Applite in China, which is why Applite now offers download mirrors. The release notes shown inside the app's update window are excluded from it.

Applite looks after the apps you install through it. Apps you installed by hand, from a disk image or an installer, will not show up as installed.

You can bring one under Applite by installing it through Applite, which replaces the copy you have. Your settings and data are kept. If you have pointed Applite at your own Homebrew installation, anything you installed with that will already appear.

Not if you do not want it to. Alongside the ordinary Uninstall, Applite offers Uninstall & delete app data, which clears out the settings and support files an app leaves scattered around your Mac.

From CaskFlow, an open-source project that collects icons from the apps themselves. Where there is no icon available, Applite draws a simple lettered tile instead.

Some apps need permission before they can be installed or removed, exactly as they would if you ran their installer yourself. Applite asks only when the app being installed requires it, and shows its own icon in the prompt so you can see what is asking.

The password is handed to the installer as plain text, which is how this has to work, so only enter it for apps you trust. There is a discussion of the details on GitHub.

Yes. By default Applite keeps its own copy of Homebrew inside ~/Library/Application Support/Applite, separate from anything else on your Mac, so the two never interfere. If you already use Homebrew and would rather Applite worked with that, you can point it at your installation in Settings.

Yes. Applite can use your system proxy settings. It supports HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5, one protocol at a time, and you choose which in Settings.

Applite needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, and runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

That is the same requirement Homebrew has. Applite installs apps using Homebrew, and Homebrew supports macOS 14 and later, so on an older Mac Applite would not be able to install anything reliably.

You do not. Homebrew is a free, open-source tool that developers have used for over a decade to install software on macOS, and Applite uses it to do the actual installing. Applite brings its own copy, looks after it, and keeps it out of your way. You never need to open a Terminal or learn a command.

Yes. Applite is open source on GitHub, where bug reports, translations and code are all welcome. If you would rather help that way, you can support the project through GitHub Sponsors or Ko-fi.