Install an Atlassian CLI with Homebrew: acli, jira-cli, and atlassian-cli

atlassian-cli is an independent, community open-source project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Atlassian, and is not Atlassian's official CLI (acli). Product names are used only to identify compatibility.

The short answer

People type brew install acli, brew install jira-cli and brew install atlassian cli expecting the same thing. They are three different projects, maintained by three different parties, and they do not all install the same way. One of them is a plain formula in Homebrew's default repository. The other two are not, so Homebrew has to be told where their formula lives before it can install anything.

Homebrew calls that extra formula repository a tap. Where a tap is required and you skip it, Homebrew has no formula of that name and the install appears to do nothing. Here are the three, each taken from that project's own documentation:

# 1. Atlassian's official CLI: tap required, per Atlassian's install guide
brew tap atlassian/homebrew-acli
brew install acli

# 2. jira-cli: no tap needed, it is a formula in homebrew-core
brew install jira-cli

# 3. atlassian-cli, this independent project: tap and install in one
brew install omar16100/atlassian-cli/atlassian-cli

So the tap question only applies to two of the three. jira-cli ships in homebrew-core, Homebrew's own default formula repository, so brew install jira-cli works on a stock Homebrew with nothing tapped first. acli and atlassian-cli both live in third-party taps and need the tap named, either as a separate brew tap step or inline in the install command.

Pick the row that matches the tool you meant. The rest of this guide explains how to tell them apart, how to confirm what landed on your PATH, and what to do when the shell still says the command does not exist.

Which tool are you actually installing?

Name overlap is the whole problem. "Atlassian CLI" is a description, not a product name, so it gets attached to all three. This table is deliberately thin on feature claims: where a project's specifics belong to someone else, the authoritative source is their documentation, not this page.

If what you want is a feature-level comparison rather than an install command, read acli vs atlassian-cli or the wider roundup in Jira CLI tools compared.

brew install acli: Atlassian's official CLI

If you searched for brew install acli and you want the tool that Atlassian itself builds and supports, this is the one. Atlassian's own macOS install guide documents the tap and the install as two steps:

brew tap atlassian/homebrew-acli
brew install acli

# Atlassian documents this as the verification step
acli --version

Atlassian also publishes direct binary downloads for macOS on Intel and Apple Silicon if you would rather not use Homebrew. We deliberately do not restate acli's command surface, supported products or download URLs here: those belong to Atlassian, they change over time, and the authoritative version is at developer.atlassian.com/cloud/acli. Read it there.

brew install jira-cli: the Jira-only tool

jira-cli is a separate, independent open-source project focused on Jira. It is not made by Atlassian and it is not the same thing as acli or as atlassian-cli. It is also the easiest of the three to install, because it is a formula in homebrew-core, the default repository every Homebrew installation already has. No tap step:

brew install jira-cli

You can confirm that for yourself without installing anything. On a stock Homebrew with no taps added, brew info jira-cli resolves the formula and reports homebrew/core as its source:

brew info jira-cli

So if you came here because brew install jira-cli appeared to do nothing, a missing tap is not the explanation for this one. Run brew update and read the actual error text.

The project also publishes its own tap, ankitpokhrel/jira-cli, which still works. You do not need it for a normal install.

For the command name it puts on your PATH, its configuration steps and its full command set, use the project's own GitHub repository and installation guide. Restating another project's interface from memory is how install guides go stale, so we link instead.

brew install atlassian-cli: this project

atlassian-cli is the independent, MIT-licensed Rust binary this site documents. One install covers Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket and Jira Service Management, which is the reason people reach for it instead of running a different tool per product.

Homebrew can tap and install it in a single command:

brew install omar16100/atlassian-cli/atlassian-cli

The two-step form does exactly the same thing, and is useful if you want the tap available for later:

brew tap omar16100/atlassian-cli
brew install atlassian-cli

Homebrew is the recommended route on macOS and Linux because brew upgrade keeps it current. If you would rather not use Homebrew, cargo install atlassian-cli builds it from source with the Rust toolchain, and prebuilt binaries are on the GitHub releases page for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux (gnu and musl). Full detail lives on the install page.

Verify what you installed

Because the three tools have similar names, confirm which binary Homebrew actually put on your PATH before you start debugging commands that were never installed:

# Where did each binary land, if at all?
which atlassian-cli
which acli

# What version is on the PATH?
atlassian-cli --version

# Everything Homebrew has installed, with versions
brew list --versions

# Which taps are configured
brew tap

For acli and atlassian-cli, if brew tap does not list the tap you expect, the install never happened and the tap step is the thing to fix. jira-cli will not appear in that list at all, because it comes from homebrew-core rather than a tap; check brew list --versions instead. If the formula is installed and which still returns nothing, the problem is your PATH, which is the next section.

When the command is not found

A successful brew install followed by "command not found" almost always means the Homebrew binary directory is not on your PATH. Homebrew installs to a different prefix depending on the platform, and ask it rather than guessing:

# Ask Homebrew where it installs things
brew --prefix

# Then check that its bin directory is on your PATH
echo $PATH

Upgrading, untapping, uninstalling

The upside of installing through Homebrew instead of dropping a binary into a directory by hand is that removal and upgrade are one command each:

# Refresh formula definitions, then upgrade just this one
brew update
brew upgrade atlassian-cli

# Remove the binary
brew uninstall atlassian-cli

# Remove the tap too, if you are done with it
brew untap omar16100/atlassian-cli

The same shape works for the other two tools with their own formula names, minus the brew untap step for jira-cli, which has no tap to remove. Uninstalling one has no effect on the others, because they are independent formulas.

First run after installing atlassian-cli

Installing is half the job. atlassian-cli authenticates with your own Atlassian API token, and you configure a profile once and reuse it:

# Jira, Confluence and JSM use an API token
atlassian-cli auth login \
  --profile work \
  --base-url https://your-domain.atlassian.net \
  --email you@example.com \
  --token $ATLASSIAN_TOKEN \
  --default

# Confirm the credentials actually work
atlassian-cli auth test --profile work

Credentials are stored encrypted on disk, and a token is required because Atlassian Cloud does not accept your account password for API access. The authentication guide covers token creation and multi-profile setups.

Once a profile is live, the same binary answers for all four products:

# Jira
atlassian-cli jira issue search --jql "project = DEV AND status = 'In Progress'" --format json

# Confluence
atlassian-cli confluence page list --space DEV --limit 25

# Bitbucket
atlassian-cli bitbucket --workspace myteam pr list api-service --state OPEN --limit 5

Every command takes --format json|csv|yaml|quiet, so output pipes cleanly into scripts and CI. The complete surface is in the command reference.

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