Everyone around me is crazy about homebrew. “Omg, the missing package manager for mac OS” and all that shit.

Today I was trying to steal some concert recordings from youtube [1], [2] and discovered that my yt-dlp installation was a bit outdated, so I had to update.

On my Linux server it all went easily:

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[andrei@homeserver test_dir ]$ sudo yt-dlp -U
[sudo] password for andrei: 
Current version: stable@2025.10.22 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp
Latest version: stable@2025.11.12 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp
Current Build Hash: 4c8742edceee1529f77078a9ac6a79dde9babdc11bcac9e349ed9f0e4173ebf7
Updating to stable@2025.11.12 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp ...
Updated yt-dlp to stable@2025.11.12 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Easy-peasy lemon squeezy. Now let’s move to my M2 Max running Mac OS Ventura 13.6.2.

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[andrei@Max test ]$ yt-dlp -U       
Current version: stable@2025.07.21 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp
Latest version: stable@2025.11.12 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp
ERROR: You installed yt-dlp with pip or using the wheel from PyPi; Use that to update

OOKAY, let’s try looking for alternatives. What could have been the other install method? Sure, homebrew!!

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[andrei@Max test ]$ brew upgrade yt-dlp                       

==> Upgrading 1 outdated package:
yt-dlp 2025.7.21 -> 2025.11.12
Warning: You are using macOS 13.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.

This is a Tier 3 configuration:
  https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers#tier-3
You can report Tier 3 unrelated issues to Homebrew/* repositories!
Read the above document before opening any issues or PRs.

==> Fetching downloads for: yt-dlp
✔︎ API Source yt-dlp.rb                                                                                                                                                                                           [Verifying     4.4KB/  4.4KB]
deno: A full installation of Xcode.app 15.0 is required to compile
this software. Installing just the Command Line Tools is not sufficient.

Xcode can be installed from the App Store.
Error: yt-dlp: An unsatisfied requirement failed this build.

A full installation of Xcode.app 15.0 is required to compile this software.

A full installation of Xcode.app 15.0 is required to compile this software.

A full installation of Xcode.app 15.0 is required to compile this software.

What the shit, this is not good. I mean I usually have Xcode installed, but because I try to keep this laptop as clean as possible, it’s not yet installed here. I guess we’ll have to look for a workaround:

Step one: cleanup

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[andrei@Max test ]$ brew remove yt-dlp 
Uninstalling /opt/homebrew/Cellar/yt-dlp/2025.7.21... (1,969 files, 25.6MB)

Ok, bye. Now time for step two, installing the yt-dlp release binary straight away without the need of a package manager, as described on the project’s wiki:

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curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o ~/.local/bin/yt-dlp
chmod a+rx ~/.local/bin/yt-dlp

And done.