Why is this homebrew package installed? brew uses command

Posted on: Dec 20, 2025

Something I was curious is I wanted to figure out if I say had 20 updates to formula in the Homebrew package manager, I wanted to know why an app is being used.

For example, there was an update for pcre2 and I was curious what was using that, so I found the following command:

brew uses --installed --formula pcre2

which outputted

git

to show that it was a dependency of git, which also had an update at the same time. If that command returned nothing, it would be a direct install and not a transitive install. For instance. To list those direct installs, you can also use the brew leaves command.