Install magic-wormhole with Homebrew, chocolatey, apt, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop, winget

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• magic-wormhole
• wormhole

Project history

Brian Warner's Magic Wormhole repository was created in February 2015. The official documentation presents the project as both a `wormhole` CLI and a Python library, with a protocol built around a mailbox server, optional transit relay, and a PAKE exchange that turns a human-sized code into end-to-end encryption keys.

The project became well known after its PyCon 2016 presentation and early documentation emphasized a memorable UX: one side runs `wormhole send`, the other runs `wormhole receive`, and both type or paste the same short code. Over time the documentation expanded into protocol references for the mailbox server, client-to-client protocol, file-transfer protocol, Tor support, journaled mode, and dilation.

Adoption history

Magic Wormhole moved from Python package to operating-system package quickly enough that the official installation docs recommend packaged versions first. They document Homebrew on macOS, Debian and Ubuntu packages, openSUSE packages, Chocolatey on Windows, and source installs through `pip`.

The project has broad package-manager presence in the supplied Homebrew input, including Homebrew, Chocolatey, Debian, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, Scoop, Ubuntu, and winget. Its GitHub repository also shows more than twenty thousand stars and hundreds of forks, a strong adoption signal for a small security-oriented CLI.

How it is used

The standard file-transfer workflow is `wormhole send FILENAME` on one machine and `wormhole receive` on the other. The sender displays a short code, the receiver enters it, and the clients negotiate a direct or relayed encrypted transfer.

The library is used by other applications that need code-authenticated channels. Official docs point to protocol APIs and related applications, and the ecosystem page lists multiple implementations and clients.

Why package nerds care

Magic Wormhole matters to package people because it is a tiny CLI with a big trust and bootstrap story. It avoids accounts, shared storage, long URLs, SSH setup, and manual key exchange, so it often appears in package collections as the pragmatic secure-transfer utility alongside rsync, scp, croc, and age-like tools.

It is also a protocol family, not just a Python command. The existence of Rust, GUI, mobile, relay, and mailbox-server packages gives package managers a small ecosystem to represent, which is why the original package remains the canonical anchor.

Timeline

• 2015: Public GitHub repository created.
• 2016: PyCon presentation referenced by official docs.
• 2017: Official docs describe availability in Debian 9 and Ubuntu 17.04 or later.
• 2023: Official docs note several client implementations of the protocol.
• 2026: Repository remains active with many tags and current Python compatibility documentation.

Related projects

• magic-wormhole.rs is the Rust implementation and CLI variant.
• magic-wormhole-mailbox-server and magic-wormhole-transit-relay provide the relay-side infrastructure.
• Fowl, Warp, Android Wormhole clients, and other ecosystem tools build on the protocol or interoperate with it.

Sources

• https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole
• https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole/tags
• https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
• https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/welcome.html
• source_facts.package-manager