Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GitHub Desktop VS GitHub Gist

Compare GitHub Desktop VS GitHub Gist and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

GitHub Desktop logo GitHub Desktop

GitHub Desktop is a seamless way to contribute to projects on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise.

GitHub Gist logo GitHub Gist

Gist is a simple way to share snippets and pastes with others.
  • GitHub Desktop Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-02
  • GitHub Gist Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-28

GitHub Desktop features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    GitHub Desktop offers a clean, intuitive GUI that simplifies the Git process, making it accessible for beginners and less technical users.
  • Seamless GitHub Integration
    The application is tightly integrated with GitHub, allowing users to easily clone repositories, create branches, and submit pull requests directly through the desktop interface.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    GitHub Desktop is available on both Windows and macOS, offering a consistent experience across these major operating systems.
  • Simplifies Workflow
    Features like drag-and-drop to add files, visual diff tools, and easy branching help streamline the workflow for users.
  • Collaborative Features
    The app provides useful collaborative tools such as reviewing changes, creating requests, and viewing history, enhancing team productivity.

Possible disadvantages of GitHub Desktop

  • Limited Advanced Features
    While GitHub Desktop is great for basic tasks, it lacks advanced features found in other Git clients like GitKraken or the command line.
  • Dependency on GitHub
    The app is deeply integrated with GitHub, which can be limiting for users who want to interact with repositories hosted on other platforms like GitLab or Bitbucket.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users report performance issues when dealing with large repositories or a significant number of files, which can hinder productivity.
  • Customization Limitations
    GitHub Desktop offers limited customization options compared to other Git clients or the command line, which may be a drawback for power users.
  • Offline Limitations
    Certain features of GitHub Desktop require an internet connection to interact with GitHub, limiting its usability in offline scenarios.

GitHub Gist features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    GitHub Gist provides a simple interface for creating and sharing code snippets or textual information. Users can quickly create new gists without needing to set up a full repository.
  • Version Control
    Each gist benefits from built-in version control, allowing users to track changes and roll back to previous versions if necessary.
  • Collaboration
    Gists can be shared with others easily, and collaborators can comment on, suggest changes, and fork the gist for further modification, making it a good tool for code reviews and quick sharing.
  • Embed and Share
    Gists can be embedded into websites and blogs, making it easy to share code in a readable and aesthetically pleasing way.
  • Public or Private
    Users have the option to create public or secret gists, offering flexibility in terms of visibility and accessibility.

Possible disadvantages of GitHub Gist

  • Limited Features
    Gists are not full-fledged repositories and lack many features that GitHub repositories offer, such as project management tools and issue tracking.
  • Search and Organization
    Managing and finding gists can become challenging as there is no internal folder structure or advanced search capability to organize them effectively.
  • Security
    While gists can be made private, they are still accessible by anyone who has the URL. They do not provide the same level of access control as private GitHub repositories.
  • Limited Collaboration
    While gists support basic collaboration through comments and forks, they do not offer the comprehensive collaboration tools available in full GitHub repositories, such as detailed pull requests and issue tracking.
  • File Size Limitation
    Gists have a file size limit, making them unsuitable for larger files or projects. This limits their use for anything beyond simple or small code snippets.

GitHub Desktop videos

GitHub Desktop 2.0 -- Easy Mode Version Control

More videos:

  • Review - GitHub Desktop Quick Intro For Windows
  • Tutorial - Git and GitHub for Beginners: GitHub basics, and how to use GitHub Desktop

GitHub Gist videos

Deploy Website using GitHub Pages in less than 10 mins

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GitHub Desktop and GitHub Gist)
Git
100 100%
0% 0
Design Playground
0 0%
100% 100
Code Collaboration
100 100%
0% 0
JavaScript
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GitHub Desktop and GitHub Gist

GitHub Desktop Reviews

Best Git GUI Clients of 2022: All Platforms Included
Creating branches and switching to existing ones isn’t a hassle, so is merging code with the master branch. Furthermore, you can track your changes with GitHub Desktop. Check out our detailed guide on how to use GitHub for more detailed information.
Boost Development Productivity With These 14 Git Clients for Windows and Mac
GitHub Desktop is the global standard for working with Git-related tasks in a graphical user interface (GUI). It is an open-source tool and hence completely free to use for all sorts of projects. It is available for both Windows and macOS desktops and laptops.
Source: geekflare.com
Best Git GUI Clients for Windows
GitHub Desktop is, perhaps, the most famous solution for working with Git in a visual interface. It is familiar to all developers keeping their repositories on GitHub (Git repository hosting service used for version-controlling IT projects). This free Git GUI is open-source, transparent, and functional. When you consider the Git graphical interface for Windows, GitHub...
Source: blog.devart.com

GitHub Gist Reviews

We have no reviews of GitHub Gist yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, GitHub Desktop seems to be a lot more popular than GitHub Gist. While we know about 135 links to GitHub Desktop, we've tracked only 8 mentions of GitHub Gist. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GitHub Desktop mentions (135)

  • How to Fix the Issue of Not Being Able to View Your GitHub Account on Other Devices
    Download the latest version from the GitHub Desktop website. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • 12 Steps to Organize and Maintain Your Python Codebase for Beginners
    I’m not going to dive into Git commands here — you can find plenty of tutorials online. If you’re not a fan of using the plain terminal CLI, you can also manage repositories with tools like GitHub Desktop or SourceTree, which provide a more visual, intuitive interface. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • File Governance and Versioning in Corticon BRMS
    Using terminal commands isn’t necessary for basic adoption of Git with Corticon Studio files, though. There are various tools that will allow us to bypass the command line when defining rules, including the built-in Eclipse plugin for Git version control. If you’ll be storing your assets on GitHub, though, an even easier solution is GitHub Desktop, a free desktop software that GitHub offers. It can be used in... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • An Introduction to Nix for Ruby Developers
    Nix currently is akin to git's "porcelain": powerful but esoteric. However, much like git evolved into exoteric, user-friendly tools such as git-flow, GitHub Desktop, and Tower to become user-friendly, many developers are building abstractions, wrappers, and utilities to simplify Nix usage. Let's briefly look at a few of these tools now. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Make your first contribution on github easily
    1.Download the github desktop. 2.Open the first contribution repository. 3.Open the github app and clone the repository. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
View more

GitHub Gist mentions (8)

  • Help…I’m slightly embarrassed to post this…but could anyone look at my profile and let me know if there are any “newbie red flags”. I’ve fallen in love with Python and decided to post projects from the classes I’ve taken. I’ve got more advanced projects to post and still have some project cleaning!
    If you are learning things, you could also create github gists. That way your repos will only be coding related, while you can create tutorials / work exercises in gists. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Best Practice for keeping a library of code/functions to reuse in future projects
    I use Github, both for full repos and for short gists. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Flutter Challenges: Challenge 02
    On the other hand, shared DartPads are just gists on GitHub so theoretically they can include code that works with different packages. Of course, such gists will not compile in DartPad and will be displayed as having errors :(. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Best way to make notes about coding?
    Perhaps github gists? https://gist.github.com/discover. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Some information that may be useful on the *nature of the problem* posed by the pandemic and SARS-cov-2 virus
    I looked at Github gists, but they are focused in displaying the markdown sourcecode (so e.g. Hyperlinks won't be clickable [1] ). Options just don't seem to be focused on simply hosting PDFs/information with clickable references. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GitHub Desktop and GitHub Gist, you can also consider the following products

GitKraken - The intuitive, fast, and beautiful cross-platform Git client.

Pastebin.com - Pastebin.com is a website where you can store text for a certain period of time.

SourceTree - Mac and Windows client for Mercurial and Git.

PrivateBin - PrivateBin is a minimalist, open source online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of...

SmartGit - SmartGit is a front-end for the distributed version control system Git and runs on Windows, Mac OS...

hastebin - Pad editor for source code.