What are the best visual git GUIs?

Options
Considered

1.2K

User
Recs.

Jun 6, 2021

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 25 OptionsWhy?

Best visual git GUIs	Price	Platforms	Issue Tracker support
91 SmartGit	Free/Paid	Linux, Mac, Windows	Atlassian JIRA
81 GitKraken	$0-$99/YR	Windows, macOS, Linux	-
80 Git Extensions	Free	Windows, Linux, MacOS	-
-- Visual Studio Code	FREE	Windows, macOS, Linux	-
75 Fork	$50 USD	Windows, macOS	-

See Full List

SmartGit

Top Pro

Gratis for non-commercial use

SmartGit may be used for no cost, as long as it is used only for non-commercial projects, or for a 30 day trial period. See More

Top Con

Not free/libre

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed. See More

FunOrthosie's Experience

works good enough across repositories. Handling authentication is not so good: I never got it to work right with AWS. On the other hand the cmd line is always there... See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Mac, Windows

Issue Tracker support:Atlassian JIRA

Pro Features:Conflict Solver and Compare (freely editable); Pull Requests, Comments for BitBucket, GitHub and provider independent (Distributed Review add-on); Git-Flow; highly configurable views, external tools

Pull Request/Comments support:Atlassian Stash, BitBucket, GitHub, own Git server (Distributed Review add-on)

Top Pro

Easy to use

The clean and intuitive UI makes SmartGit very easy even for people with no prior experience with Git, even after reading just a bit on how Git works and what the main commands are. See More

Top Con

It can be slow and resource hungry

It was written in Java, which is known for being a resource hog, and it can be slow on some machines, as well as prone to errors if developers are not very experienced. See More

CommunicativeHothr's Experience

Bad user experience as it is not self-explaining and the GUI ist really old. See More

Top Pro

In-client merge resolution

No more need for kDiff or another external client. Every commit comes with a clean view of the merge, and the same UI is used for merge-conflicts. See More

Top Con

Absolute git beginners will find it very complicated

JJ's Experience

Nearly 1 year ago, I evaluated multiple Git GUI clients and SmartGit is the one that resonated with me the most, from the beginning with the good "search for repos to open" to the various advanced features. While the UI was a little daunting for the first couple hours with all the stuff, I quickly was amazed and grew to appreciate using it with so much capability and neatly packaged (yes a few oddities here and there, but wow it was so well organized for me). They regularly roll out incremental releases with nice feature adds. They are very user-focused: their support/responsiveness to User Echo and the email list is phenomenal; their process makes it very easy to participate. I bought the lifetime license. See More

Top Pro

Has the most features and most logical layout

Compared to gitk, git gui, SourceTree, GitKraken. See More

Top Con

Free version doesn't support Gitlab Community Edition

It requires paid commercial version. See More

Todd's Experience

I've used SmartGit on Windows, macOS, and Linux for the past 3 years and love it. It has a simple and easy to use UI which is awesome for viewing logs and diffs. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform

Works on GNU/Linux, MacOS, and Windows. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive UI

At first glance, the sub windows are poorly organized. For example, there isn't an easy way to navigate the files in the repository. It's drastically differently designed than other popular source control clients. See More

Deepak Naidu's Experience

The best UI I found and most feature rich than I expect from a tool. See More

Top Pro

Great view of the timeline of the project (the log)

Top Con

Some Git functionality has been renamed

In order to preserve the same interface across Git and Mercurial, some naming compromises have been made. See More

ColorfulGatumdag's Experience

I'm using it for a few years now See More

Top Pro

Auto stash

Greatly improve the user experience when rebasing, etc. See More

Top Con

Very expensive and no multi-user licences

91 EUR per year per person for the base version is more expensive than top development IDEs, and is exaggerated. No multi-user and no site licence either, which makes the licence management a pain. See More

DreamerAtahensic's Experience

The interface is so bad and cluttered. I worked with other Git IDEs and all of them shared the easy UX naavigation. See More

Top Pro

Syntax coloring for many languages

The built-in compare and conflict solver has syntax coloring with customizable colors. See More

Top Con

Currently lacks support for git subtree

It's a useful feature when developing several independent project modules in parallel. See More

Top Pro

Smart embedded difference viewer

When the changes affect only a few characters in a line of code, the embedded difference viewers in the majority of competitors (such as SourceTree) show the whole line as removed and re-added. SmartGit highlights the characters that have been removed / added, so they are easier to read. See More

Top Con

Font size too small and cannot be changed

Top Pro

Can be integrated with Github, Bitbucket, GitLab, and Atlassian Stash

Using OAuth, you can connect SmartGit with your accounts in Github, Bitbucket, or Stash and access the remote repositories there. You can then clone, fork, commit or push to your remote repositories from inside SmartGit. You can also view and manage pull requests for your open source projects from SmartGit. See More

Top Con

Appears to not handle AWS credentials

A pain. Though there's always cmd line. See More

Top Pro

Clean UI

SmartGit has a rather clean and uncluttered user interface. All the most useful tools and information are displayed at all times or are otherwise just a couple of clicks away. All repositories are displayed in the sidebar and through a tabbed interface you can view various info about a specific repository (files, branches, branch graph, etc). The most used git commands like pull, push, sync, commit and merge are always available on top. See More

Top Con

Requires non-beginner level of GIT to appreciate fully

Top Pro

Excellent dark theme

And support for own themes. See More

Top Con

Diff display doesn't show long lines well

If changes are made in very long lines, the diff display is hard to navigate. See More

Top Pro

Runs repository diagnostics in the background

SmartGit regularly runs repository/config diagnostics in the background to ensure smooth operation and high performance. It prompts user with warnings and suggestions on how to improve configuration and often provides a one-click auto-fix. For example, it will warn you when repository needs cleaning-up, when sub-modules are not properly initialized, or when its auto-rename-detection feature is too intensive because of too many untracked files. See More

Top Con

Missing .rpm package

For linux distributions, like Fedora or OpenSUSE it is a trouble with manual dependency matching to get it work. See More

Top Pro

Can see dangling commits and stash commits

Rebased, but not yet garbage-collected commits can be easily made accessible again, e.g. after a reset hard. See More

Top Con

Auto clean up consumes a lot of resources

Leaving SmartGit idle for some time will start project clean up, consuming a lot of PC processing power, making it completely unusable until it finishes. It can be disabled from the options menu, but should be disabled by default. See More

Top Pro

Can rearrange Repository window and Log window views/panels

This allows great layouts as desired. See More

Top Pro

Log with fine-grained display of branches

There is no option of just showing the current branch or all branches, but you can select very fine-grained what branches/forks should be displayed. See More

Top Pro

Great overview of the project/repository's log

SmartGit's log viewer displays the full commit history in a clean UI. This can be filtered to only show commits matching a certain criterion (e.g. branch). See More

Top Pro

The best multi-repository support

Can make a repo group containing multiple repos; it acts as a meta repo. Can submit selected files from multiple repos in a repo group in one commit action; uses the same commit message in all the repo commits. See More

Top Pro

GPG support

GPG in SmartGit makes for added security. See More

Top Pro

Extendable with external tools

External tools (which have a command line support) can be integrated to be used to open/view files, for diff or as conflict solvers. E.g. editors like Notepad++ or VS Code, p4merge to diff images or kdiff3 as diff view/conflict solver. See More

Top Pro

Can edit file in workspace or index directly from the compare view

This is very useful when reviewing files before committing and finding a needed quick tweak. See More

Top Pro

Great support

Support responds quickly and they genuinely try to help you! If it's a bug, it will often be fixed within days. See More

Top Pro

UX design is synergy with how a developer actually works

It may look confusing at first, but once you know each part, you love how useful they are. See More

Top Pro

Git squash

Git squash is a pain on CLI, and most Git clients allow some king of squash during Rebase only. I really like the Ctrl+J shortcup to simply squash commits. See More

Top Pro

Free for non-commercial use (with some restrictions)

SmartGit can be used free of charge by Open Source developers, teachers and their students, or for hobby, non-paid usage. However, some features are only available with paid versions, like JIRA/GitHub Entreprise/Bitbucket integration, distributed review, DeepGit. See More

Top Pro

GitFlow support

GitFlow provides a consistent development process by defining a strict branching model that is great for managing large projects. SmartGit/Hg allows setting up and integrating into repos that follow this model. See More

Top Pro

Allows rearranging views

If screen space is limited, one can stack some views onto another. 2 layouts are available - "Main" and "Review" - with independent view positions. See More

Top Pro

Portable version for Windows available

SmartGit also has a portable bundle that can be downloaded and can be run from external devices (such as a flash drive for example). See More

Top Pro

Every git command is available through the GUI

Not every, but nearly all. See More

Top Pro

Offers life-time updates

One payment, get updates for all future versions. See More

Top Pro

Great filtering options

The file list view can be tweaked and filtered in many ways (e.g. regex can be used). See More

Top Pro

Supports Mercurial & SVN

Apart from Git, SmartGit supports both Mercurial and SVN via a git bridge. See More

Top Pro

Evolution submission program

See here. See More

Top Pro

Git Bisect implementation

Top Pro

Can detect issue numbers and links to the issue tracker

Support GitBugTraq file See More

Top Pro

Supports selecting open issues from JIRA

Allows you to select the desired issue, instead of having to do it manually. See More

Top Pro

Journal dedicated for current branch history

Showing commits from the current branch, its remote branch and one auxiliary branch. Independent of the that, there is a log window available that allows to view all (other) commits. See More

Top Pro

Auto-detects repositories on disk

Top Pro

Best submodule workflow on the market

You can easily update submodules from the containing repo, unlike other GUIs that require you to open each repo separately. Saves a lot of time when working on a monorepo managed using submodules. See More

See All

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24 Other Options Considered

GitKraken

Top Pro

Beautiful user interface

It's modern and beautiful, it looks clean and refined. It's simple: the most used features (pull, push, branch, stash, commit) are accessible in one click, and are the only buttons. The other features aren't in complicated menus nor in hundreds of buttons, but rather displayed when you right-click on something. It gives more space to the commits, i.e. the most important things. In fact, you can collapse or reduce the other menus/windows. It displays the current path (project, branch) on an horizontal (clickable) bar at the top. It's just a matter of taste but I prefer this to the traditional "tree" view. It has undo and redo buttons on the main window. It supports some drag-and-drop gestures (for example: drag-and-droping the local branch to the remote one pushes it). See More

Top Con

Must log into GitKraken servers to use the free version

All functionality is disabled unless you register for a free account and remain logged in. There is the $99/user/yr Enterprise option. It allows you to deploy a Linux License Server in an air-gapped/offline environment. See More

WittyChalchiuhtlicue's Experience

Very intuitive GUI and easy to use especially for beginners See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Integrations:GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Azure DevOps, GitHub Enterprise, GitLab Self-Hosted, Bitbucket Server, Jira Cloud/Server Issues, GitKraken Boards Issues

Top Pro

Extremely easy to use

A lot of care has gone into trying to make GitKraken as easy and intuitive as possible and it show. Every action is quick and painless with no more user interaction than necessary. For example, switching to another branch is as easy as a double-click on the sidebar. See More

Top Con

Has memory-related issues

Like most Electron apps, GitKraken has some memory-related issues. For starter, it requires more memory for an action than an equivalent non-Electron application. Although this should not be a problem most of the time for people who use machines with lots of RAM (after all, RAM is pretty cheap nowadays), it can have some issues when opening large repositories and there have been cases where GitKraken failed to open very large repositories or started lagging once they were opened. See More

ReflectiveFulgora's Experience

Has a really good implementation of a dark theme so you can continue working throughout the night without disturbing your eyesight See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Built on top of Electron, so it runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. See More

Top Con

Not open source

It is gratis (no cost) but is not open source. The community cannot fix problems in it, audit it for security, or trust it in general. See More

EnthusiasticSreng's Experience

Not free for private repo. See More

Top Pro

Offers a simple way of undoing mistakes

GitKraken has simple undo/redo buttons that work the same way you'd expect in any other software. See More

Top Con

Not free for commercial use

The free version of GitKraken cannot be used in commercial projects. See More

CourageousMegaera's Experience

Removed after used agreement update: license obligates you to track and store into about application usage and to allow audit of it. Free version rejects to work with projects hosted on less known git hosting providers (gitgud.io) See More

Top Pro

Some of the best integration with hosted version control services

GitKraken can be connected to Github, Gitlab, or Bitbucket accounts through OAuth. From that point onward most if not all actions that are related to these services can be done inside GitKraken. Things like: cloning or forking a repository, adding a remote, pushing to a remote repository hosted on these services can be done inside the app. You can even manage pull requests inside GitKraken for example. All pull requests for a certain branch for example are shown on that branch's graph. See More

Top Con

Slow

Can take between 2 and 5 seconds to load a repository, if not crashing while loading See More

CaffeinatedEulabeia's Experience

The Linux Client is not updated regularly. Also it had a lot of crashes and lags while we used it in a project last year. Whileas the Windows Versions were performance wise ok the Linux Client was stuck all the time and Actions took almost forever. My personal opinion is also that you don't get enough feedback from the app while it's doing something. Perhaps the reason for the crashes was that we used it in a large project in an offline environment but I would have at least expected that the dev team is responsive and resolves the issues. But it was not. Flagged up the problems and never heard of them anything again. That's just bad support See More

Top Pro

Has a FuzzyFinder

GitKraken has a fuzzy finder to switch between repos/files. See More

Top Con

No longer free for use with private repos

You can use GitKraken for free if you're working on a public hosted repo, but you can no longer work on a private hosted one without paying. See More

Mauricio Flores Hernandez's Experience

I'm about one year using GitKraken and i really love it, it's UI it's beautiful and easy to use. No more shell! See More

Top Pro

Under constant improvement

A quick glance at GitKraken's release notes shows how frequently it's updated. Updates are released on a 2-4 week cycle and each one brings new features and bug fixes. See More

Top Con

Crashes once in a while

Under specific circumstances, like resetting 5000+ changes, the GUI will crash. See More

LaterTater's Experience

My go to Git GUI. I've tried many of the others, but found that GitKraken offers the easiest to use interface while looking the best. Easy to use doesn't mean that advanced Git functionality is missing, though. GitKraken offers all of the operations I need to do during my daily development workflow. See More

Top Pro

Free version available

There are both pro and free versions available. The free version is pretty complete feature-wise for day-to-day operations. See More

Top Con

Has annoying popup reminders that ask you to upgrade to the Pro version

Understandable, since nobody is entitled to use work done by others for free, but annoying nonetheless. See More

ColorfulSarruma's Experience

Not free for private repos See More

Top Pro

Perfect for beginner developers

GitKraken is easy to use and is brilliant for the beginner developers See More

Top Con

Not free for private repository

The last update made the app total nonsense. from now on, you need to purchase a license if you have a private project. See More

Djay's Experience

Really good product when it work, a nightmare when it don't See More

Top Pro

GitFlow support out of the box

Supports GitFlow out of the box. See More

Top Con

Amending merge output is a pro feature

In most cases of Merge Conflicts, users are stuck with auto-merge or manually resolving it by hand. This is because in the Free Tier, users can only (1) Keep File (ver 1), (2) Keep File (ver 2), (3) Auto-merge, or (4) Use External Merge Tool. In addition, using External Merge Tools is very limited because GitKraken (all tiers) restricts External Merge Tools to only those it managed to Auto-detect. It also does not support custom arguments for the External Tools. Modifying the merge output directly, or Selecting lines to keep/discard, is a Paid Feature. See More

ResourcefulMaterMatuta's Experience

GitKraken was fine until they changed the pricing to no longer freely support private repos. I do a lot of work with GitKraken for training and educational work within my company, but thanks to this policy change I would now have to pay for the privilege of developing on a private repo. Instead I'll be looking for a truly free alternative. See More

Top Pro

Has a dark theme

No more eyestrain staring at white screens - GitKraken has a lovely dark theme. See More

Top Con

Not free for private projects

The FREE plan does not allow you to open private repositories. This seems to be a recent change as of November 2019, previously that was ok. See More

Norm Strassner's Experience

none See More

Top Pro

Good keyboard shortcuts

Top Con

Not free for private repos

It is no more free for use with private in-house repos. On top, need to log onto the gitkraken account to use it at all. It's like enrolling in a home depot account just to be able to open your own front door. See More

InventiveHarpocrates's Experience

Used to be horrible years ago. However, they update furiously and are now the #1 choice among Git clients - and I've used many. Dark theme with a beautiful UI. Even works well with Unity, supporting countless tiny files. Can open multiple repos at once in tabs. Has just about every feature you'd want, including their own widgets. Decent price for a premium product. Updates often - even on Windows (Unlike SmartGit that leaves Windows a year behind). See More

Top Con

Can be confusing

FunKui's Experience

Really easy. Works 99% of the time unless the user screwed something up. Love this client See More

Top Con

Ugly, looks like a web app

Jeff Dickey's Experience

Previously used Tower (reasonably happily) and SourceTree (inspired me to try anything else). Command-line native since '79. GitKraken makes the easy stuff a no-brainer, the tricky stuff straightforward, and the destructive stuff clearly marked and explained. It never gets in my way while freeing me from having to remember all the tricky little details of a tool that I use to manage all the tricky little details of my work. If you value devoting your available cognitive load to your goal rather than the tools you use to achieve your goal, give GitKraken a try. See More

Top Con

No real commitement to Linux support

Infinite loop on Fedora 28, no debug feature or stacktrace available, no clear dependencies listing.... No real support on Linux. See More

SuccessfulChantico's Experience

Well designed UX and modern UI ! See More

IndependentBaldr's Experience

Not free anymore! See More

DeterminedBoann's Experience

Features are slowly being stripped from the free version and the pricing model is ridiculous. It's beautiful to look at, but does suffer from memory issues. Oh and the lead dev is a colossal ass-hat. See More

See All

Git Extensions

Top Pro

Comprehensive interface

Developer focused and powerful options See More

Top Con

Requires mono

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, MacOS

Top Pro

No registration at all

Doesn't require registration to use. See More

Top Con

Poor UI

Rich developer experience but awful interface. See More

Top Pro

Free/libre

This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed. See More

Top Con

Few plugins

A small selection of plugins. See More

Top Pro

Plugins

It comes with many plugins and you can build your own. Included by default are some very neat visualization tools for Repository metrics. See More

Top Pro

Easy to add add action in the GUI

Right click to add a script to delete remote branch or tag... See More

See All

Visual Studio Code

Top Con

Embedded Git isn't powerful enough

You can do nothing but to track changes, stage them and commit. No history, visualization, rebasing or cherry-picking – these things are left to git console or external git client. See More

Top Pro

Inline definition picking and usages finding

These features allow you to have a glance at code without opening it as a whole in a separate tab. Moreover, editing is allowed. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:MIT

Multi Language Support:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

Top Con

A "me too" offering from MS, far behind other well established editors that it attempts to clone

Other IDEs specific to a language often offer better tools for deep programming. See More

Top Pro

Python support

Excellent Python plugin, originally created by Don Jayamanne, now hired by Microsoft to extend and maintain the extension. See More

Top Con

The autocomplete and code check is not as powerful as the one on WebStorm

Sometimes it doesn't tell you if you made a typo in a method name or if a method is not used and several other important features. See More

Top Pro

Integrated task runners

Task runners display lists of available tasks and performing these tasks is as simple as a click of the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Ready to use out of the box

You don't need to configure and add plugins before being productive. However, you can add plugins if needed but for the basics you're well covered. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well. See More

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

There's no need to press alt+tab to go to a terminal: it is directly integrated into the editor. Shift+~ is a handy hotkey to toggle the integrated terminal. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control, guaranteeing speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows. See More

Top Pro

Extendable through plug-ins

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plug-ins available to extend its functionality. See More

See All

Fork

Top Pro

Fast and easy to use

Top Con

Not available for Linux

This git client is not compatible with Linux making the life harder for the developers that work on both, MacOS and some Linux distro. See More

FunnyMaterMatuta's Experience

Easy to use and under continuous improvement. I've been able to do all the normal day-to-day GIT operations and able to do so with a modern interface. I like having the dark theme as well. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS

Price:FREE / $49.99

Top Pro

You can download and evaluate the Software for free, but need to purchase a license for long-term use

The work on Fork is done by a family of software developers crafting Fork in our spare time full-time. See More

Top Con

Still a young client, thus so not as feature rich

This git GUI client is quite young compared to industry old-timers like git-tower 2 or SourceTree. So it's not as feature rich as you'd like. Still a very capable client for a simple day-to-day work. See More

AgreeableTjilbruke's Experience

User-friendly and feature-rich. Looks and feels great and it's completely free. See More

Top Pro

Fork is available for Windows

Top Con

Proprietary

This app is not free software and the licensing terms are somewhat unclear. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Con

Hard to see which repos have uncommitted changes at a glance

Have to click the repo names one by one to see the uncommitted changes. Remember Sourcetree Mac client having an indicator showing the number of uncommited changes. See More

Top Pro

Constantly updated

Weekly/monthly updates, the devs maintain it. See More

Top Con

No LFS locks support

LFS locks, introduced in v2.0, are mandatory when it comes to using GIT with non-technical personnel who has to edit binary files. This is not possible with Fork. See More

Top Pro

Dark theme support

Top Con

Limited search

The search / filter options are still very limited in comparison to e.g. TortoiseGit. See More

Top Pro

Overall aesthetic

The GUI components are flawless on the Mac. It is expected to be a similar experience on Windows. Once you realize that you can filter by branch, your appreciation for the product will go up dramatically. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful and intuitive

Top Pro

Highlights the difference within a line

Top Pro

Tabbed interface

Several repos can be open at once in individual tabs, so it's trivial to switch back and forth between them. See More

Top Pro

Comfortable when staging line-by-line changes

This feature is superior to the one that is implemented by SourceTree as it does not reset the file scroll view to the top of the file after each stage. If you do feature-specific commits after some time of development - it's very important to be able to easily compose the commit from different line-based changes. See More

Top Pro

Smart Diff is very handy

Top Pro

Merge Conflict Resolution is great

Top Pro

Comfortable keyboard shortcuts

See All

SourceTree

Top Pro

Powerful enough for experts

Makes advanced Git and Mercurial commands more accessible with a visual context. Review outgoing and incoming changesets, cherry-pick between branches, patch handling, rebase, stash, shelve, and much more. See More

Top Con

Requires registration to install and use

An Atlassian account is required for use. See More

CaffeinatedIakhsari's Experience

Installation not free it cost my data See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS

Price:Free

Top Pro

Informative branch visualisation

In addition to color-coded branches and icons that tell if a file has been added, removed or modified, Sourcetree also displays the number of commits that are ahead and behind remote repo. See More

Top Con

Overly-complicated UI

Every command line function was seemingly assigned to a button or menu item. That doesn't equate to a good visual interface. See More

EmpatheticTamKung's Experience

Was a bit buggy in the beginning, but late versions are basically unusable – any change to files requires full restart of the app to become visible in the UI See More

Top Pro

Gratis

No cost to use without registration. After 30 days, it requires registration (which also costs nothing). See More

Top Con

Buggy as hell

DecisivePyrrhichos's Experience

No dark theme.Very slow to start and switching from one file to another takes lot of time as teh diff get loaded See More

Top Pro

Built-in integration with Stash and Bitbucket

Sourcetree integrates with repositories hosted on Bitbucket, Stash, GitHub, and Kiln. See More

Top Con

Unstable and terrible UX

The Windows version of SourceTree is riddled with bugs, causing some users to find it unusable. These include failing to refresh, frequent freezing, and slow performance. The recent redesign (February 2016) has made the UI difficult to navigate. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Git-flow and Hg-flow support

Git-flow and Hg-flow provide a consistent development process by defining a strict branching model that is great for managing large projects. Sourcetree allows setting up and integrating into repos that follow this model. Clicking the Git-flow / Hg-flow toolbar button will give you access to actions for starting or finishing features, releases or hotfixes depending on current state of repository. See More

Top Con

No Linux version

There's no Linux version available. See More

Top Pro

Supports Git, Mercurial and Subversion

Allows managing Git & Mercurial repos side by side. It even allows Subversion interoperability via either git-svn or hgsubversion plugins that set up a bridge between either Git and SVN or Mercurial and SVN respectively. See More

Top Con

Always slow

Top Pro

Consistent UI across platforms

SourceTree is great for working in a cross-platform environment as it has the exact same UI on Windows as it has on OS X. See More

Top Con

Terrible for resolving merge conflicts

It's hard to tell when you are in a conflict state, let alone what to do if it happens. See More

Top Pro

Comprehensive layout

SourceTree has 3 main repository views: file status, history and search. File status view shows status of currently selected repo. It's split in 2 areas - file list and diff-view. History view tracks changes made to the currently selected repository. It's divided in 3 sections. The top section has a graph with progression of commits, branches and merges. The bottom section shows commit details, files changed and differences committed. Search view allows looking up commit messages, users, files changes, branches and commit SHA. There's also a toolbar at the top that allows switching between the three views as well as gives access to git commands such as commit, checkout, reset, stash, add, remove, fetch, pull, push, branch, merge and tag. See More

Top Con

Poor UX for interactive rebase

The interactive rebase window is a pain to use, with poor UX, such as not refreshing the list once a change is made. It's a downgrade from git rebase --interactive. See More

Top Pro

Easy and intuitive interface

A clean interface that allows you to use the main git features with one click. See More

Top Con

Does not support offline usage

As of 2.0.20.1, it now does a dial-home on each start-up. If you're working on air-gapped networks for security and compliance requirements, SourceTree is a no-no. See More

Top Pro

Allows chunks and lines selection during commit

SourceTree automatically splits the changes to be committed into chunks allowing committing (or discarding) each chunk separately. Furthermore, the user can even select specific lines. This greatly increases the flexibility of the user in that matter. See More

Top Con

Struggles with large repos

With large projects and commits it's can become unresponsive and sometimes crash. See More

Top Pro

Supports Git, Mercurial, and Subversion

Allows managing Git & Mercurial repos side by side. It even allows Subversion interoperability via git-svn or hgsubversion plugins which set up a bridge between either Git and SVN or Mercurial and SVN respectively. See More

Top Con

Not free/libre

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed. See More

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

No tabs on Mac

Top Pro

No renamed controls

This can be both a pro and a con, because the UI will change slightly depending on which repository type you're using. Might be more of a pro, though, because it helps you to either learn the command lines or instantly know what things are if coming from the command line. See More

Top Con

Browsing folders is troublesome

Choosing files of specific folders for check-in is troublesome. See More

Top Pro

Simple yet powerful

SourceTree allows you to do advanced Git operations while making them straight-forward for those who are still adjusting to Git. See More

Top Con

Login problems

Frequently unable to log in, despite the correct password. See More

Top Pro

Supports Git LFS

Top Con

Not always recognizes changed files

Seems to not always recognize changed files, which means that they will not be pushed to remote origin either. This means if you switch branches, the files will be overwritten and you lose your progress. Very annoying. See More

Top Con

No dark theme

No dark theme for Windows, however MacOS version does have a dark theme. See More

Top Con

Information density can be a bit much

It's possible to be overwhelmed with the information density presented in Sourcetree. Especially in history view since it includes a lot of data presented in various ways. It's great for getting a comprehensive overview of everything that's happening in one place, but it can take some getting used. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support git word-diff

--color-words, --word-diff, and related options are not available. See More

Top Con

Not good with bare remote repos

Doesn't allow a straightforward interface with bare remotes. See More

Top Con

Windows version isn't stable and behaves differently to the Mac one

See All

GitAhead

Top Pro

Multi-platform

Windows, macOS, and Linux. See More

TallMaterMatuta's Experience

Fast, mind-placed options like auto-commit, black theme for night crawlers. Once Gitkraken got commertial i got into this one, and i feel good with it, even faster than the "electron" gitkraken client. The only other program that may compete with those two IMHO is smart git. The thing is to have a fast flow on the gui, instead of overshoot the surface with buttons and colors. Great. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Top Pro

It is now free and open source

No longer requires an account. See More

InfluentialIsis's Experience

Works free, and on Linux as a sort of replacement for Sourcetree. See More

Top Pro

All basic Git features included

Branches, Pull, Push, Fetch, Cherry-pick, Stash, Revert, Rebase... See More

DedicatedKondole's Experience

Great Tool See More

Top Pro

Designed to support repository exploration

BravePeklenc's Experience

Cannot be installed on my Windows 10. So it is off. See More

Top Pro

Can link to most used git cloud providers

Link to gitlab, github and bitbucket accounts. See More

Top Pro

Qt-based

This means it is fast, looks great on any platform and integrates especially well with KDE. See More

Top Pro

Fastest on Linux

Not based on web technologies and fastest to start and work with, yet featuring all required features. See More

See All

GitUp

Top Con

Only on Mac

Only available for OSX, so if you are used to working with different OSes and you want the same tools in each of them, it's impossible to have that with GitUp. See More

Top Pro

A truly visual interface to git repos

It's a radical departure from the other apps which all more-or-less just throw all the git actions into menus. GitUp is a visual editor for repos, branches, and commits. One can select and move commits with intuitive gestures. See More

ArticulateUenuku's Experience

does not support shallow cloned repo, sometimes rebasing does not work in the same way as command line See More

Specs

Platforms:Mac

Top Pro

Free/libre

This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed. See More

CourageousFebris's Experience

I manage a small open source project which is hosted on two Git repos, one on Sourceforge and one internal to our organization. I would have a very difficult time keeping track of both without GitUp. I only wish it was available on Linux. See More

Top Pro

Blazing fast

Fast Git GUI. Everything is already there and loaded when you open up the window. See More

Top Pro

Fully featured

Top Pro

Full undo

You can backup, or edit commits, if you make a mistake. See More

Top Pro

Allows doing complex things without memorizing git

Git usage beyond basic checkout/commit is arcane; GitUp lets you do things in git in seconds that would take you a half hour of research with the command line. See More

See All

TortoiseGit

Top Pro

Windows context menu integration

Context menu enables access to common commands quickly. See More

Top Con

Windows only

No Linux or OSX versions available. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

Technology:C, C++

Top Pro

Can parse and provide a pretty log of all commits or filter by branch

Top Con

Renames git commands

Makes things hard to find for people used to the git CLI. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Licensed under GPL. See More

Top Con

Buggy file status icons

The file icons are also often buggy and do not reflect its true status. Often times the icon is missing and makes you think a file or folder is untracked, when it is already staged, or sometimes even already committed and pushed. See More

Top Pro

Convinient blaming tool

Very friendly blame tool. Easy to walk in the history of a file. See More

Top Con

May clutter your Windows Explorer

If you have synced your dev folder to a cloud service, TortoiseGit's git status file icons will override your cloud provider's icons. See More

Top Con

No support for staging

It does not support staging in any way. You'll never guess that this feature is exist in git. See More

See All

Tower

Top Pro

Pretty, modern-looking user interface

Tower has a good-looking interface and consists of 3 main views - services, repositories and repository. Services view for managing integrations with hosting services like GitHub, Bitbucket and Beanstalk. Repositories view for organizing local and remote repositories into folders and getting general overview about them. Repo view that consists of two main subviews: Working copy view shows modified files and their diff and allows wrapping up changes in a commit. History shows commits alongside metadata and projects file structure. Additionally, it allows performing various tasks such as merging branches via drag & drop, search allows searching by message, commit hash, author, committer and file and there's a quick open that allows fuzzy-searching for folder names. See More

Top Con

Stability issues on Windows

On a simple repository, the UI often lags or freezes. See More

InventiveHarpocrates's Experience

Not free while many others are; Windows is a year behind Mac updates; no dark theme on Windows; mediocre customer service; No status bar/circle/logs - will often just freeze; desyncs often; inefficient, even on an awesome PC since they don't utilize multi-threading; many promised features with few deliveries on Windows version; poor Unity (high qty of files) support. Overall, still better than many others, but absolutely not the best. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac

Pricing:FREE, $69/year for Basic, $99/year for Pro, $149/year for Enterprise

Features:Pull Requests, Interactive Rebase, Git-Flow, Dark Mode, Undo, Quick Actions, Image Diffing, Reflog, Drag & Drop, User Profiles

Free Version:Yes, for students, teachers, schools, universities, coding bootcamps etc.

See All Specs

Top Pro

Offers a visual way to solve conflicts

Tower shows conflicting files, their authors and the commit that made changes. It then allows selecting which files should be used in the final result. See More

Top Con

Not free/libre

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed. See More

Top Pro

Git-flow integration

Git-flow provide a consistent development process by defining a strict branching model that is great for managing large projects. T2 allows setting up and integrating into repos that follow this model. See More

Top Con

Expensive

Costs $69. See More

Top Pro

The UI only shows the needed commands at a time

Tower covers most of the daily tasks that a developer may need to complete. It shows only what you need for the most common tasks without overwhelming the user. See More

Top Con

Inefficient UI

In order to not overwhelm the users with information, much of the information is either hidden by default or requires navigating to a different section to access. See More

Top Pro

Github integration

Top Con

Doesn't support Subtrees

Top Pro

Git LFS

Tower comes with built-in support for Git LFS. Handy when working with large files. See More

Top Con

Doesn't have a built in diff

Top Pro

Free for students

If you are a student, you can get your free Tower Pro license here: https://www.git-tower.com/students See More

Top Pro

Interactive Rebase via Drag and Drop

Top Pro

Undo Support

Many Git actions can be undone in Tower simply by using the keyboard shortcut CMD+Z. Examples: Deleting branches and files, staging changes, rebasing & merging branches, or publishing a branch on a remote See More

Top Pro

Very polished user interface

Top Pro

Cherry-Picking via drag and drop

Top Pro

GPG support

Tower offers user profiles. You can then connect GPG keys with your profiles, sign commits and see which commits have been signed and by who. See More

See All

git-cola

Top Pro

Crossplatform

Works on Linux, Mac and Windows See More

Top Con

Limited feature set

You sometimes need to touch the terminal in order to get certain things done. See More

Raghu Ranganathan's Experience

As my first Git GUI, it was very easy to use and did the job well. Very stable and easy to use git client on all platforms. It is one of my Go-to GUIs for Git. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:GPLv2

Top Pro

Free/libre

This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed. See More

Top Con

Poor documentation and support

Top Pro

Very fast

Unlike Source Tree git-cola still works great even with a huge code base and a lot of changes. See More

Top Pro

Minimalist interface

Simple to use and easy on the eyes. See More

Top Pro

Shortcuts

git-cola implements a nice fast workflow where you do not need to touch the mouse based on a few keyboard shortcuts See More

Top Pro

Full unicode support

See All

Gitg

Top Pro

Beautiful and simple

The UI is very straightforward, once you open it, you can browse your computer to find an existing git repository and open it in the app. Once opened you can browse commits and view remotes immediately. It also allows you to browse the files and preview them. There's also a commit view which shows past commit messages, as well as unstaged and untracked commits. See More

Top Con

Some git features are missing

There are some key/authentication issues. See More

Specs

License:GPLv2

Top Pro

Client side decoration (CSD)

Top Con

Slow on large repositories

Top Pro

GNOME integration

Gitg is a GNOME project and as such integrates well with the platform. See More

Top Pro

Free software

Gitg is free and open source software (FOSS). See More

See All

GitHub Desktop

Top Con

Limited

Can't handle complex tasks. The Help Manual advises to use command-line Git instead. See More

Top Pro

Great GitHub integration

This is the official GitHub desktop client built by the GitHub team. See More

LoyalMafdet's Experience

Designed for people without a complex workflow or less than managing a handful (sub five) repos) the 'new electron' based version is aweful to use and development test behind are intent on developing a product that doesn't service the needs of power users and enterprises. See More

Top Con

Does not support multiple Remotes for a repo

Only allowed to assign one URL as remote. To manage/sync/fetch other remotes, use command-line Git instead. See More

Top Pro

Simple, streamlined GUI

GitHub Desktop uses an extremely simplistic two-panel view. It's not capable of complex historical visualisations like other GUIs, but it is very easy to use (especially for git novices). See More

Top Con

Overly Simplified UI

UI that is designed not to support the needs of power and enterprise users. Management of more than five repos is next to impossible. See More

Top Pro

Supports pull requests

In addition to being able to seamlessly and easily integrate with all of GitHub's features, it also supports forking and submitting pull requests on any open source project hosted on GitHub. See More

Top Con

Buggy

Poster child for authors' programming ideology (FRP), likely the cause for the odd quirks and bugs it has. See More

Top Con

Not free/libre

This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed. See More

Top Con

No Linux support

There's no Linux version of this client. See More

Top Con

Non-GitHub repositories are not fully supported

Since this is mainly a GitHub client, other repositories are not fully supported and with as many features and setting up a repo hosted anywhere else but GitHub is troublesome. See More

See All

Ungit

Top Con

Node.js dependent

Top Pro

Free and Open Source Software

Ungit is open source software available under the MIT Licence. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Price:Free

Top Con

Setup is not user-friendly

Ungit is distributed as an NPM package and requires git and Node.js to be installed on your system before you can run it. Ungit must be launched by running ungit in a command line terminal. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on Windows, Linux, and OS X. See More

Top Con

Exposes git commands to your network

No authentication, if someone can communicate with your computer on the port this is running on, they can execute any git command they want on your repos as well as view your filesystem's folders. See More

Top Pro

Optional Integration with Modern Text Editors

Ungit can be integrated directly into modern text editors, Atom, Brackets, and VS Code. See More

Top Pro

Web-based interface

Ungit is web-based, meaning you can run it on your cloud/pure shell machine and then use the UI from your browser. See More

See All

Aurees

Top Con

Requires registration

Top Pro

Clear interface

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Top Con

License does not respect your privacy

Think twice before you use the application. Check the license aggreement . You agree that each and every e-mail address, which You use to commit changes into a Git repository, may be automatically sent to and stored by Nezaboodka for verification purposes; You agree with Nezaboodka's and their partners' advertising to be shown by the Software and to be sent to Your registration e-mail; See More

Top Pro

Full-fledged wide diff out of the box

Top Con

Sloppy interface

The interface feels cobbled together and not refined. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

See All

IntelliJ

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What are the best visual git GUIs?

The Best 1 of 25 OptionsWhy?

SmartGit

My Recommendation for SmartGit

My Recommendation for SmartGit

Gratis for non-commercial use

Not free/libre

Easy to use

It can be slow and resource hungry

In-client merge resolution

Absolute git beginners will find it very complicated

Has the most features and most logical layout

Free version doesn't support Gitlab Community Edition

Multi-platform

Unintuitive UI

Great view of the timeline of the project (the log)

Some Git functionality has been renamed

Auto stash

Very expensive and no multi-user licences

Syntax coloring for many languages

Currently lacks support for git subtree

Smart embedded difference viewer

Font size too small and cannot be changed

Can be integrated with Github, Bitbucket, GitLab, and Atlassian Stash

Appears to not handle AWS credentials

Clean UI

Requires non-beginner level of GIT to appreciate fully

Excellent dark theme

Diff display doesn't show long lines well

Runs repository diagnostics in the background

Missing .rpm package

Can see dangling commits and stash commits

Auto clean up consumes a lot of resources

Can rearrange Repository window and Log window views/panels

Log with fine-grained display of branches

Great overview of the project/repository's log

The best multi-repository support

GPG support

Extendable with external tools

Can edit file in workspace or index directly from the compare view

Great support

UX design is synergy with how a developer actually works

Git squash

Free for non-commercial use (with some restrictions)

GitFlow support

Allows rearranging views

Portable version for Windows available

Every git command is available through the GUI

Offers life-time updates

Great filtering options

Supports Mercurial & SVN

Evolution submission program

Git Bisect implementation

Can detect issue numbers and links to the issue tracker

Supports selecting open issues from JIRA

Journal dedicated for current branch history

Auto-detects repositories on disk

Best submodule workflow on the market

24 Other Options Considered

GitKraken

My Recommendation for GitKraken

My Recommendation for GitKraken

Beautiful user interface

Must log into GitKraken servers to use the free version

Extremely easy to use

Has memory-related issues

Cross-platform

Not open source

Offers a simple way of undoing mistakes

Not free for commercial use

Some of the best integration with hosted version control services

Slow

Has a FuzzyFinder

No longer free for use with private repos

Under constant improvement

Crashes once in a while

Free version available

Has annoying popup reminders that ask you to upgrade to the Pro version

Perfect for beginner developers

Not free for private repository