# Fix Homebrew 'Permission denied @ apply2files' error

> How to fix the Homebrew Permission denied @ apply2files error during brew cleanup by recreating the missing folder, like the Docker cli-plugins directory.

Author: Flavio Copes | Published: 2021-07-06 | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/homebrew-fix-permission-denied-apply2files/

After running `brew upgrade node` to upgrade my [Node.js installation on macOS](https://flaviocopes.com/node-installation/), [Homebrew](https://flaviocopes.com/homebrew/) decided to run `brew cleanup` automatically.

It was doing its things, with a bunch of `Removing: /Users/.....` until I got the error 

```
Error: Permission denied @ apply2files - /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins
```

🤔

See "docker" in the path?

Turns out I had deleted [Docker](https://flaviocopes.com/docker-introduction/) recently and this was causing an error. What I did to fix was to recreate a folder of the Docker app:

```sh
mkdir -p /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/cli-plugins
```

and running 

```sh
brew cleanup
```

Again. The issue was fixed. 

Your issue might be caused by another library missing, not Docker, so in this case you can Google the specific error message you have and see if someone else had the same issue and figured it out. But that's a start.