# Updating Homebrew for macOS

Updating [brew.sh](https://brew.sh/) for macOS is a fairly easy and trivial task (you can use my **brewup** [script from here](https://github.com/drummingdemon/scripts) to make it even simpler), but sometimes things go south and the update process ends with a somewhat cryptic error like this:

```
==> Postinstalling node

Warning: The post-install step did not complete successfully

You can try again using `brew postinstall node`
```

Running `brew doctor` could help identify the culprit and it usually ends up being a **Permission denied** error – remember the time you tried to issue some commands related to brew / node / npm that began with the magical word `sudo`? Well, it turns out those files affected by it are now untouchable and that’s why brew fails to update.

To solve this permission denied error, issue the following in a terminal session:

```
sudo chown -R $(whoami):admin /usr/local/lib/node_modules/
```