What are the best visual git GUIs?

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

5

Pro
Cross-platform

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

2

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.

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.

4

Con
Requires registation

As of one of the latest versions.

Con
Uses a lot of memory

Compared to other Git-clients with a graphical user interface, GitKraken uses up a lot of memory.

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score 16 · Answer 2

#2

tig

Although not strictly GUI, but rather text interface (TUI) the features and quality of the tool are impressive

Pro
Very fast

When you want to push a commit as soon as possible, you can still run tig to make sure everything is right. No need to wait, it comes up almost instantaneously.

Pro
Works over ssh

Being a text program, tig runs on remote hosts just as well as it does on the local machine.

Con
Complex interface

Tig has text mode "windows" that can be focused and unfocused. Key actions depend on the focus. Some keys affect the inactive window. Shortcuts are non-intuitive and hard to remember.

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score 58 · Answer 3

#3

SourceTree

A free Git & Mercurial client for Windows or Mac.

Pro
Gratis

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

2

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.

Con
No Linux version

There's no Linux version available.

Con
Requires registration

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score 14 · Answer 4

#4

SmartGit

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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.

Pro
Clean UI

And it can be edited using drag n drop to suit your tastes.

Con
Not free/libre

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

Con
Irritating starting screen

Start Screen gets on top of all and every window open until SmartGit opens up, which takes some time.

score 17 · Answer 5

#5

Tower

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Pro
Pretty, modern-looking user interface

T2 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 getti...

Pro
Offers a visual way to solve conflicts

T2 shows conflicting files, their authors and the commit that made changes. It then allows selecting which files should be used in the final result.

Con
Expensive

Costs $79 USD.

Con
Not free/libre

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

score 8 · Answer 6

#6

Magit

Full integration with Emacs across multiple platform.

Pro
Cross-platform

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Pro
Full-featured

Know any negative aspects of this option?

score 9 · Answer 7

#7

Git Extensions

Pro
Comprehensive interface

Pro
Free/libre

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

Con
Poor UI

Rich developer experience but awful interface.

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score 8 · Answer 8

#8

TortoiseGit

Pro
Windows context menu integration

Context menu enables access to common commands quickly.

Pro
Open source

Licensed under GPL.

Con
Windows only

No Linux or OSX versions available.

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Con
Renames git commands

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

score 8 · Answer 9

#9

GitHub Desktop

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).

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3

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.

Con
Incomplete feature set

Cannot e.g. rebase.

Con
Limited

Can't handle complex tasks.

score 4 · Answer 10

#10

GitUp

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.

Pro
Fully featured

Con
Only on Mac

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score 3 · Answer 11

#11

Ungit

Pro
Free and Open Source Software

Ungit is open source software available under the MIT Licence.

Pro
Cross-platform

Works on Windows, Linux, and OS X.

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.

2

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.