macOS Intel: "no bottle available!" (macOS Intel is now disabled in CI)

[ewenmcneill]

Output of brew config

ewen@basadi:~$ brew config
HOMEBREW_VERSION: 6.0.20-69-g6bf9a47
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 6bf9a47106220bc907579a9aa7c47faac070ea40
Last commit: 6 hours ago
Branch: main
Core tap HEAD: 10ef8fe96fe6e66c9b87476aca897a5b6d344e14
Core tap last commit: 4 hours ago
Core cask tap origin: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask.git
Core cask tap HEAD: 8816dfad003c2575512ce2d7868c0d10b56c1c40
Core cask tap last commit: 5 hours ago
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /usr/local
HOMEBREW_EDITOR: /usr/bin/vi
HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS: set
HOMEBREW_NO_ENV_HINTS: set
Homebrew Ruby: 4.0.6 => /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/4.0.6/bin/ruby
CPU: dodeca-core 64-bit kabylake
Clang: 17.0.0 build 1700
Git: 2.55.0 => /usr/local/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 15.7.7-x86_64
CLT: 26.3.0.0.1.1771626560
Xcode: N/A
ewen@basadi:~$

Output of brew doctor

ewen@basadi:~$ brew doctor                        
Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry or file an issue; just ignore this. Thanks!

Warning: Some installed formulae are deprecated or disabled.
You should find replacements for the following formulae:
    c-kermit
  gtk+

ewen@basadi:~$

Description of issue

NOTE: Creating a discussion for visibility of users encountering this issue, since the only other reference -- Homebrew/homebrew-core#301207 -- is a closed, locked issue which isn't very obvious, and an official announcement of the change seems to be a few weeks away.

---

As of 2026-08-28, the macOS Intel CI runners (building bottles for macOS Intel) were disabled, due to them "having serious issues".

This means that bottles (ie pre-built packages) for macOS Intel are no longer being produced for updated packages, effectively moving macOS Intel to Tier 3 slightly ahead of schedule.

As announced a year ago, and a few times more recently, macOS Intel was expected to move to Tier 3 (no CI / builders) "in or after September 2026".

So this change is definitely planned, and long foreshadowed, to happen "soon". But in practice it happened unexpectedly slightly early (from the point of view of end users) since it sounds like the macOS Intel builder/CI issue became unmaintainable. (I, and some others I've discussed it with, were arbitrarly assuming it'd be more like "when macOS 27 releases", ie in a few weeks.)

For the record, I understand why the macOS Intel support in HomeBrew is ceasing, and would probably have done similar myself (even if Apple's final macOS Intel support lasts a bit longer, it will be increasingly difficult for third parties to support). And I understand that "broken builder/CI" forced y'all's hand.

I just think that it should be obvious to users that it's happened on what is roughly "-3 Septemer 2026" instead of later in the month. Hence this post to have a public reference, as it sounds like the official HomeBrew announcement will be closer to the macOS 27 release, and lots of macOS Intel users will see signs of the problem before then.

---

Example of the sort of output from macOS Intel for a package with a new updated added since ~2026-08-28:

ewen@basadi ~ % brew upgrade htmldoc
Error: htmldoc: no bottle available!
If you're feeling brave, you can try to install from source with:
  brew install --build-from-source htmldoc

This is a Tier 3 configuration:
  https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers#tier-3
Do not report any issues to Homebrew/* repositories!
Read the above document instead before opening any issues or PRs.
ewen@basadi ~ %

(For the record that message comes from formula_installer.rb when it detects there is no bottle available. As of 2026-08-31 only a few packages are affected; it'll become more common for macOS Intel installs throughout September 2026 and later, as more packages get updates.)

[botantony]

So this change is definitely planned, and long foreshadowed, to happen "soon". But in practice it happened unexpectedly slightly early (from the point of view of end users) since it sounds like the macOS Intel builder/CI issue became unmaintainable. (I, and some others I've discussed it with, were arbitrarly assuming it'd be more like "when macOS 27 releases", ie in a few weeks.)

We didn't plan to drop Intel bottles in August but something happened to Sonoma x86_64 runners the last Friday. That's why we did it sooner than expected

cc @p-linnane, I think he can explain what happened in details

[SMillerDev]

Just to give an idea of the serious issue that caused this:
The pre-test setup went from seconds to > 2 hours to complete, meaning every build would have to wait at least that time + whatever time it took to build the software (example: 1). This in turn caused a huge backlog of software that was waiting to build.
We tried to debug the issues, but we couldn't figure out why the VMs had such degraded performance.

Since we had no way of resolving this, were days away from our deadline we communicated for a while and were blocking all updates to other platforms with this. We decided to deprecate Intel bottles on "-3 September 2026" as you put it 😄.

The queue has now recovered and we're bottling at much faster speed for all remaining platforms now.

[ewenmcneill]

Just to give an idea of the serious issue that caused this:

Thanks for adding the details here for the record 💚

Apologies if it seemed like I was implying it didn't need to be done in August -- the "serious issue" was intended to be direct quote, not sarcasm. As I said in the OP, I'd probably have done the same thing with something very broken a small number of days before it was due to be turned off anyway.

Good to hear everything else is doing well now!

The only thing I'm hoping to achieve here is that users suddenly experiencing "no bottle available!" having either assumed "after macOS 27 releases" or forgotten that September 2026 is upon us (~1 hour away for me) have some obvious way to find out this is "expected, a wee bit earlier than planned but expected" when searching.

[SMillerDev]

Apologies if it seemed like I was implying it didn't need to be done in August -- the "serious issue" was intended to be direct quote, not sarcasm. As I said in the OP, I'd probably have done the same thing with something very broken a small number of days before it was due to be turned off anyway.

Don't worry, I took it to be a quote. Thanks for the polite replies and for making this discussion to help people find answers.

[mojotx]

I'm genuinely upset about this.

I understand the technical reasons for ending Intel bottle builds, and I'm not asking the Homebrew maintainers to reverse the decision. What I am frustrated by is how this was communicated to users.

I have a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro running the current version of macOS. I had planned to continue using it until early 2027 before replacing it with an Apple Silicon Mac. Instead, I woke up to a flood of "Tier 3 configuration" and "no bottle available" errors and spent a good bit of time troubleshooting what appeared to be a problem with my Homebrew installation.

After digging through the issue, running diagnostics, inspecting formula metadata, and finally finding this thread, I eventually discovered that Intel macOS bottle production has effectively stopped.

I strongly believe the Support Tiers documentation should be updated to make it crystal clear that all Intel Macs are now effectively Tier 3 for bottle availability purposes. The current wording led me to believe that an up-to-date Intel Mac running a supported version of macOS remained a Tier 1 configuration.

What frustrated me most is not the decision itself. It's that the practical impact of the decision was not obvious until things started breaking during routine upgrades.

I suspect many Intel users will go through the same confusion I did.

[acdha]

Yes, I just wasted a bit of time because the documentation very clearly states that my Intel iMac should be Tier 1 and I spent time looking for configuration drift only to discover that it had nothing to do with the local system. While the best case would've been fixing the CI runners, at the very least it'd be nice to update https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers#tier-1 or potentially change the brew warning to specifically say “this will never be fixed, buy an Apple Silicon device if you need Tier 1”.

[p-linnane]

Updated messaging will be out in tomorrows release.