Best 12 Free Open Source Git GUI Clients for macOS

What is Git?

Git is an open-source free distributed version control system that developers use to manage their source code. It allows developers to track changes, collaborate and work together on the same project.

What is a Git GUI Client?

A Git comes with a CLI tool, which many developers use to, branch, add, commit, push, clone, and pull their code. However, many developers may require a GUI client which basically will do the same.

In this article, we list you a collection of a dozen free open-source Git GUI clients for macOS, as free options to commercial paid programs.

1- GitHub Desktop

GitHub Desktop is a free open-source Git desktop client for macOS, and Windows. It offers 2 versions for macOS: one for Intel and the other for the new Apple Silicon.

GitHub Desktop features

Comes with a straightforward interface
Integrated history manager
The User can follow up changes easily
Easy to manage branches and create new branches
Attribute commits with collaborators easily
Checkout branches
Syntax highlighted diffs
Expanded image diff support
Extensive editor & shell integrations
Checkout branches with pull requests and view CI statuses
Quickly add co-authors to your commit

2- Sourcetree

Sourcetree is a free Git GUI desktop client for Windows and macOS. It eases the user dealing with Git without the need to dive into a complex command-line workflow.

Sourcetree Features

Comes with a simple easy-to-use interface even for beginners
Packed with dozens of useful tools
Integrated image browser
Built-in full-text search engine with filters
Easy to visualize code
Developers can visualize their commit progress
Support large files
Seamless Git workflow
Supports Git submodules
Local commit search
Interactive rebase
Remote repository manager

3- GitKraken

GitKraken is a feature-rick Git client that comes with a visual-rich interface. It may look complex, but it is easy to deal with.

GitKarken features

Review commits in visually
Git-Enhanced Terminal
Tabbed user interface that allows user to manage many projects at once
Add commits and comments easily
Add co-author easily
Easy to track channels updates
Merge Conflict Resolution
Safely Resolve Merge Conflicts
Create & Manage Pull Requests
Supercharge Rebases
Easy Undo
Deep Git Integrations
Supports GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, and Bitbucket
In-app merge
Command palette access
Built-In Code Editor
Diff Split View
File History & Blame
Syntax highlighting
Comes with a strong full-text search with in-files search
File mini-map visualization
Manages submodules easily

4- Gittyup

Gittyup is a graphical Git client designed to help you understand and manage your source code history.

Gittyup works for macOS, Windows (32/ 64 bit), and Linux (Flatpak).

Gittyup

Understand your Git history!

Gittyup

5- Git Cola

Git Cola is a sleek and powerful graphical user interface for Git. Git Cola is free software and written in Python (v2 + v3).

It is available for macOS, Linux and Windows. It also comes with several keyboard shortcuts that increase the productivity and speed of the recurrent tasks.

Git Cola: The highly caffeinated Git GUI

git-cola logo

6- MeGit

MeGit is an open-source Git client ton hat is originally based EGit (Eclipse Git Client).

It features a fancy visualization for the git history, a staging view, GitFlow operations support, and Interactive rebasing support.

7- CodeReview

CodeReview is a Git GUI tool to perform code review (Diff Viewer) written in Python3 and Qt5. It is available for Linux and can be installed on Windows, and macOS using PyPI.

CodeReview Features

A straightforward easy-to-use interface
display and browse the log and paches of a Git repository
diff side by side using Patience algorithm
watch for file system changes
Code highlighting mode
Line numbers
Change font size
Stage/unstage file

8- GitX-dev

GitX-dev is an open-source free macOS Git client. It is basically a fork (variant) of GitX, a long-defunct GUI for the git version-control system. It is licensed under the GPL version 2.

It has been maintained and enhanced with productivity and friendliness oriented changes, with effort focused on making a first-class, maintainable tool for today's active developers.

GitX-dev features

History browsing of your repository
See a nicely formatted diff of any revision
Search based on author or revision subject
Look at the complete tree of any revision
Preview any file in the tree in a text view or with QuickLook
Drag and drop files out of the tree view to copy them to your system
Support for all parameters git rev-list has
Good performance on large (200+ MB) repositories

GitX - Home

Home

9- GitUp (native macOS)

GitUp is an open-source GUI native macOS program for Git.

Unlike most of the apps here, GitUp comes with a simple interface which is not busy with dozens of features.

With GitUp, you get a truly efficient Git client for Mac:

A live and interactive repo graph (edit, reorder, fixup, merge commits…),
Unlimited undo / redo of almost all operations (even rebases and merges),
Time Machine like snapshots for 1-click rollbacks to previous repo states,
Features that don’t even exist natively in Git like a visual commit splitter or a unified reflog browser,
Instant search across the entire repo including diff contents,
A ridiculously fast UI, often faster than the command line.

10- LazyGit

LazyGit is a free open-source git client packed as a terminal app with a nifty interface using Gocui (UI terminal library for the Go programming language).

LazyGit can be easily installed on macOS using the binary release package, using Homebrew, or MacPorts.

It is also available for Windows, and several other Linux distros as Void Linux, Arch Linux, Fedora, RHEL, Solus Linux, Funtoo Linux, as well as Unix (FreeBSD).

11- Ungit

Ungit is an open-source web-based Git client which you can install and run on your local machine or remote server to manage your local Git repos.

It features a user-friendly light interface which runs smoothly in all modern browser.

Ungit is written in Node.js, and it requires Node.js 14 or later to run.

How to install Ungit?

First, make sure Node.js (14+) is installed then run:

$ npm install -g ungit

When the installation is done, run the app by typing ungit in your terminal.

12- GitBlade

GitBlade is a clean and simple graphical client for Git that works on Mac, Linux and Windows.

It has a free Lite version that supports many of the "every day" features and there's also a PRO version for users who want to jump into the "here be dragons" section.

GitBlade.com - a Git Client for Linux, Mac and Windows

An elegant GUI for Git that works on Linux, Mac and Windows

GitBlade

The Bottom Line

Git GUI desktop is an essential tool for developers and programmers, which offers an easy straightforward to handle complex operations developers often use the CLI.

We covered the best open-source free Git GUI desktop for clients as alternative for paid, and overpriced commercial solutions.

If you know any other open-source similar app that is not in this list, let us know.