Boost your development productivity with these 14 Git clients for Windows and Mac

If you're starting a software/application development project and don't know which git clients or git GUIs will work best for you, here are the 14 best git tools for you.

Software, mobile application or web development projects must handle multiple source codes or programming scripts. When it comes to writing technical papers for these programs, authors end up going through multiple iterations, resulting in more than one paper.

For development projects, organizations need a version control system, or Git. Project managers, developers, and technical writers need to sync their workstations with any Git server or package repositories to fork. Here you need to use the git GUI or git clients.

Keep reading to learn about some of the popular git clients.

What is a Git client? 🖥️

Git clients are essentially computer software that interacts with your local or remote package repositories. These tools are the basic requirements for the technology stack of any development project.

During software development iterations, the development team performs git clone, git fetch, git pull, git commit, git stash, and other version control related tasks. The git GUI automates these tasks for you and your DevOps team, so there are fewer human errors.

You might be wondering how GitHub's command line interface (CLI) is different from any dedicated git client. Most git platforms offer a command line interface for interacting with software packages from an IDE or IDE.

But git clients offer a graphical visualization of your git and don't require complex programming syntax to perform a git commit or fetch or any other task.

How do Git clients improve development productivity? ⏲️

Git clients or GUI tools are modern applications that offer many benefits when used in DevOps projects. Here are the best benefits:

  • GUI The GUI can save you from wasting time solving unexpected git issues and errors. You don't want your team to be involved in troubleshooting a git repository when they could be coding a software module.
  • Git CLI is good for basic tasks. You absolutely must practice these tasks to become a confident developer. However, you may want to use git clients for complex chores like managing branches, rebasing, pulling, merging, or pushing.
  • Merge conflicts cause problems, and debugging these errors is easier in the git GUI than in the git CLI.
  • Git clients are useful in adapting a novice programmer to an ongoing development project.

Now that you've learned more about git clients, it's time to learn about the best git GUIs for effective DevOps projects:

GitFinder

GitFinder is a git GUI for macOS computers running macOS 10.11.5+ operating systems. It combines version control or Git with the Finder module. When you import git files in the Finder tool, it shows the status of those files with descriptive icons and icons.

Its GUI also offers an elaborate toolbar menu. Thus, you can perform git commit, git pull, git push, git fault, and many other actions with the click of a mouse. In addition, it comes with a customizable context menu.

Its repository browser window gives the developer a huge opportunity during program development. The repository browser can display remote branches, local branches, submodules, and tags.

Other important features that GitFinder offers are quick diffs, merge conflicts, file history, pull requests, simple accusations, keyboard shortcuts, deleting/creating remote repositories, Cherry-pick, and Revert.

GitUp

GitUp is an open source solution for git repository and IDE interaction on macOS machines. The tool is based on the universal Git toolkit known as GitUpKit. This set of tools is reusable, so you can build your own Git app based on GitUpKit.

One of the best features of this tool is to visualize changes in a repository or source code in real time. Even if you make small or major changes outside of the GitUp environment, the tool will show live activity to indicate the changes.

You can also use its snapshot feature to go back in time if you need an older version of your program. Also, it's an incredibly fast git GUI as it can load and display a visualization of 40,000 commits of a Git repository in less than a second.

Gitbox

Gitbox is another dedicated git client for macOS computers. It allows you to git pull, push and commit in one click. You can also perform other advanced tasks such as undoing Git commands, advanced history search, branch reset, rebase, and cherry picking without using the Git CLI.

Its user interface allows you to focus on your programming tasks by visualizing all important sections on one screen.

Thus, you can choose the function you need without looking through different windows of the program. For example, the Gitbox UI shows the following:

  • current branch
  • Pull, push, merge and rebase
  • Remote or local target branch
  • History search text box
  • Repositories
  • Commits
  • Files and changes

It also offers various third-party tool integrations for diff checking. For example, Gitbox can sync with diff tools like Kaleidoscope, DiffMerge, Xcode FileMerge, and Changes.

TurtleGit

If you enjoy working on a Windows machine on development projects, you should try the TortoiseGit tool. It's open source, so don't burden your project with additional costs when you add this tool to your programming technology stack.

Basically, it's a TortoiseSVN-based Windows Shell UI for Git. Using the various Git commands is easy because you need to interact with a familiar user interface, the Windows Explorer context menu.

You are free to use TortoiseGit with any development programs you prefer as it is non-IDE specific integration with Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc. It is ideal for large scale DevOps projects as you can also integrate the tool with issue tracking systems.

Fork

If you want to try something new and fresh, Fork should be on your list. It is available for both macOS and Windows workstations. You can either get a free trial copy for basic tasks, or get a paid license if you need more powerful development features.

This git GUI offers extremely useful tab-based navigation so you can easily organize your git management tasks. Also, if you're looking for git clients that allow you to open an application or website you're developing with the same tool, again, Fork should be your go-to.

Some of the notable features of this tool are image diffs, merge conflicts, Cherry-pick, submodules, Git LFS, Git-flow, interactive rebase, and repository manager.

Auree Git Client

For remote and distributed teams that use different workstations for DevOps projects, Git Client Gold can be a wise choice. The reason is that the tool supports most Windows, macOS, and Linux computers. This way your team can work with one tool and do more consistent work.

Auree uses a GitHub account. Hence, its users need to be logged into this GitHub account in order to use this git GUI client. After logging in, you can view all code changes, tags, IDs, and authors associated with those changes.

It is a viable free alternative to the complicated Git CLI as you can perform almost all Git related tasks with this tool. In addition, its colorful tags will help you easily navigate your Git repository.

Git Cola

Git Cola is a Git desktop client built primarily for Linux distributions. This is an open source tool and should already be present on your Linux workstation. Later, as the popularity grew, the developers of the tool released compatible versions for Windows and macOS.

One of its best features is the robust interface customization. You can only keep the options you use frequently and hide all other features to avoid clutter in the coding interface. This way you can focus more on coding than playing around with unnecessary Git commands.

GitKraken Client

GitKraken is another top-notch tool among git clients due to its efficiency, reliability, and stylish user interface (UI). The tool is equally popular among experienced and novice developers.

However, if you need to give an aspiring developer a place on your DevOps project, GitKraken should be the first choice.

Along with the essential features for managing Git, it offers an editor for making changes to existing code. You can also start a new project without leaving the desktop client.

New and existing tasks are automatically synced, making it ideal for organized collaboration on software or application development.

tower git client

The Git tower client helps you manage large development projects and is also ideal for projects that need to scale. This is a premium GUI git client for Windows and macOS computers.

Although you need to make some initial investment in this tool, it will quickly bring you profits by increasing the productivity of your project.

It comes with a lot of solid features like repository management, commit history, submodules, and learning resources. Plus, you can easily sync your service accounts with the platform as it supports GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub, Azure DevOps, and more.

Git client source tree

Source Tree is a GUI git tool from Atlassian, the IT company that also developed Bitbucket and Jira. Compared to other similar tools, Sourcetree offers a more powerful graphical user interface (GUI).

Like its competitors, it makes it easy to seamlessly perform basic Git tasks such as cloning a local/remote repository, pulling, committing, pushing, and merging code changes.

Sourcetree supports extremely large Git files. The tool quickly loads and displays branch diagrams or commit graphs of such large package repositories without slowing down your workflow.

SmartGit

If you are looking for a cross-platform git GUI, you can try SmartGit . You can easily install the software on macOS, Linux or Windows computers. What's more, the tool runs smoothly on your device without slowing it down.

It comes with all the Git features you might need for your software development project. It also has a special feature that automatically resolves merge conflicts.

However, you can also visualize two source codes side by side for a deeper understanding of programming code changes.

Experts love this tool for its solid integration support. You can easily connect the tool to your BitBucket Server and GitHub accounts. You can also use Distributed Reviews add-ons to view code in real time from remote offices.

sublime fusion

Sublime merge allows for faster commits, better code browsing, efficient search across the entire repository, and automatic resolution of merge conflicts.

In addition, the tool supports Linux, macOS, and Windows devices, so your development team doesn't have to work on the same project using different git clients.

Some of the notable Git-related features of this tool include text syntax highlighting, inline staging, commit editing, submodule management, command palette, and integration with Git Flow.

Sublime Merge gives you the feel of real Git because you can visualize exactly the commands you see in Git.

GitHub desktop

The GitHub desktop is the global standard for working with Git-related tasks in a graphical user interface (GUI). It is an open source tool, so it is completely free to use for any projects. It is available for both desktops and laptops with Windows and macOS.

GitHub Desktop allows you to:

  • Quickly create local repositories
  • Interaction with internal or external developers
  • Easily write codes with syntax suggestions
  • Visually track all source code changes, versions and their authors.

There is a huge developer community that puts their talent and effort into keeping GitHub Desktop working and constantly updated.

Git is an outstanding version control system as it supports a range of devices such as Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android. Thus, if your team likes to manage git on smartphones, you can try Git.

While Git primarily offers a CLI for managing git, it also has two built-in GUI tools for Git-related tasks. git-GUI is for committing and gitk is for browsing the repository.

For other git management tasks, you need to integrate Git with third party tools like GitHub Desktop, SourceTree, TortoiseGit, etc.

Output 👩‍🏫

Git clients are powerful tools that improve the performance of any commercial or non-commercial website/application/software development program. The tools discussed are the preferred git GUIs that many experienced software developers rely on.

All of these tools will offer the basic functionality that any development project needs to interact with git repositories. Some of the above may contain specialized or premium features that open source git clients may not offer.

Thus, you can choose the tool that suits your development project. In addition, you can use the AI-based code completion tool to further assist you in software development.

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