Install hackrf with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• hackrf_biast
• hackrf_clock
• hackrf_cpldjtag
• hackrf_debug
• hackrf_info
• hackrf_operacake
• hackrf_spiflash
• hackrf_sweep
• hackrf_transfer

Project history

The public GitHub repository was created in 2012 and identifies Michael Ossmann as the principal author. Great Scott Gadgets' product documentation describes HackRF One as the first production hardware platform for the HackRF project, a half-duplex SDR peripheral for transmitting or receiving signals from 1 MHz to 6 GHz. The official product page frames the hardware as an open source platform for testing and developing modern radio technologies.

HackRF's early public adoption was helped by Michael Ossmann's Kickstarter campaign for an open source SDR platform and by the later Software Defined Radio with HackRF course material. The documentation records that Great Scott Gadgets began shipping HackRF One revision r1 in 2014, with later revisions driven mostly by component availability while preserving the same factory-measured performance specifications.

The software evolved alongside the hardware. Release notes show host-tool and firmware releases adding multiple-device support, sweep mode for wideband spectrum monitoring, automatic CPLD bitstream loading, Opera Cake antenna-switch support, and hardware support for HackRF One r9. A 2026 release added HackRF Pro support while keeping compatibility with HackRF One-oriented software as an explicit goal.

Adoption history

Great Scott Gadgets lists GNU Radio, GQRX, QSpectrumAnalyzer, SDR#, SDR Console, Universal Radio Hacker, SigDigger through SoapySDR, and other tools as software with direct HackRF support, while tools such as Baudline, Inspectrum, and Matlab can consume data captured with hackrf_transfer. That ecosystem made the Homebrew package valuable even for users who never built firmware or hardware files.

HackRF also became part of security and radio education workflows because it combined transmit and receive capability, open hardware design files, and a low-cost host-tool stack. The official SDR with HackRF course ties the device to GNU Radio, DSP fundamentals, signal capture, replay experiments, and multiple-HackRF workflows, which explains why package users often treat the CLI tools as lab utilities rather than a standalone application.

How it is used

Package-manager users install HackRF mainly to get libhackrf and the hackrf-tools executables. Typical workflows include checking device identity and firmware with hackrf_info, capturing or transmitting signed 8-bit quadrature samples with hackrf_transfer, scanning spectrum ranges with hackrf_sweep, flashing firmware with hackrf_spiflash, and configuring Opera Cake antenna switching with hackrf_operacake.

The official documentation stresses that host tools and firmware should match. This matters for package maintainers because formula upgrades can expose users to mismatches between a newly installed libhackrf and older device firmware, and because some releases require both host-side and device-side updates.

Why package nerds care

HackRF is a classic hardware-adjacent package: it looks like a small CLI formula, but it carries USB access, firmware coordination, SDR application compatibility, and regulatory context. For Homebrew and other package systems, the value is not only the binaries but also a reproducible path to libhackrf for tools that detect or link against HackRF support.

It is also a useful case study in open hardware packaging. The same upstream repository contains hardware designs, firmware, host libraries, tools, and documentation, while the package usually exposes only the host-side pieces needed by desktop SDR applications.

Timeline

• 2012: Public GitHub repository created for the HackRF hardware and software platform.
• 2013: Kickstarter campaign presented HackRF as an open source SDR platform by Michael Ossmann.
• 2014: Great Scott Gadgets began shipping HackRF One r1 hardware.
• 2015: Software Defined Radio with HackRF course material documented practical GNU Radio and HackRF workflows.
• 2017: HackRF release notes documented sweep mode for wideband spectrum monitoring.
• 2021: Release notes documented automatic CPLD bitstream loading through firmware.
• 2022: Release notes documented Opera Cake support and documentation migration into the repository docs tree.
• 2023: Release notes documented HackRF One r9 hardware support.
• 2026: Release notes documented HackRF Pro support in libhackrf and hackrf-tools.

Related projects

• GNU Radio: common SDR environment used with HackRF.
• SoapySDR and SigDigger: SDR software layers that can use HackRF through supported interfaces.
• Opera Cake: Great Scott Gadgets antenna-switch add-on configured by hackrf_operacake.
• Ubertooth One: another Great Scott Gadgets open hardware radio/security tool, related by community and use case rather than by code.

Sources

• https://github.com/greatscottgadgets/hackrf
• https://github.com/greatscottgadgets/hackrf/releases
• https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/one/
• https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/
• https://hackrf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/hackrf_one.html
• https://hackrf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/hackrf_tools.html
• https://hackrf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/list_of_hardware_revisions.html
• https://hackrf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/software_support.html
• https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mossmann/hackrf-an-open-source-sdr-platform