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Add to SafariWhen comparing ForkLift 3 vs GitHub Desktop, the Slant community recommends GitHub Desktop for most people. In the question“What are the best Git clients for macOS?” GitHub Desktop is ranked 12th while ForkLift 3 is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose GitHub Desktop is:
This is the official GitHub desktop client built by the GitHub team.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Best UX/UI'd file manager on the market
It's just a perfectly crafted app, try and enjoy
Pro Rewritten in Swift
Forklift 3 is a significant update from FL2, having been rewritten entirely in Swift.
Pro Optional dark UI
In addition to the default Mac gray UI, Forklift 3 offers an alternate "Dark Mode" featuring light text elements against dark backgrounds.
Pro Connect to and mount lots of storage options
FTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, Rackspace CloudFiles, SMB, AFP, NFS, VNC, etc.
Pro Easily toggle hidden files
Pro Built-in application remover
Pro Great GitHub integration
This is the official GitHub desktop client built by the GitHub team.
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).
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.
Cons
Con Like Apple, it does not standardize file size. Mixes up KBs, MBs GBs in the same column which makes it very difficult to review file sizes
Con Like Apple, shows the date of Today's file as "Today" instead of the actual date
Con Does not sync the "selected" folders (i.e. highlighted ones), but the "current" folders (i.e. the top of the visible tree.)
Con Does not show the fixed tree section in the left pane of a dual horizontal panes
Con Limited
Can't handle complex tasks. The Help Manual advises to use command-line Git instead.
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.
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.
Con Buggy
Poster child for authors' programming ideology (FRP), likely the cause for the odd quirks and bugs it has.
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed.
Con No Linux support
There's no Linux version of this client.
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.
