To migrate existing data from a previous major version of PostgreSQL run: brew postgresql-upgrade-database
To have launchd start postgresql now and restart at login: brew services start postgresql Or, if you don't want/need a background service you can just run: pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres start ==> Summary 🍺 /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/11.5_1: 3,189 files, 35.6MB ==> `brew cleanup` has not been run in 30 days, running now... Pruned 4 symbolic links and 58 directories from /usr/local