Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GitHub Desktop VS Gogs

Compare GitHub Desktop VS Gogs and see what are their differences

GitHub Desktop logo GitHub Desktop

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

Gogs logo Gogs

A painless self-hosted Git service written in Go
  • GitHub Desktop Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-02
  • Gogs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-21

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.

Gogs features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Gogs is designed to be extremely lightweight and fast, running efficiently with minimal resource usage, which is ideal for personal projects or small teams.
  • Self-hosting
    By allowing users to host their own Git service, Gogs provides greater control over data privacy and security, making it suitable for sensitive projects.
  • Cross-platform Support
    Gogs can run on various operating systems including Windows, macOS, Linux, and ARM, offering flexible deployment options across different environments.
  • Easy Installation
    The installation process for Gogs is straightforward and quick, with binaries and Docker images available for different platforms, reducing setup time.
  • Active Development
    Gogs has an active open-source community and regular updates, ensuring new features, bug fixes, and improvements are continually being made.
  • Low Dependencies
    Gogs has few dependencies, simplifying the installation and maintenance process by reducing potential compatibility issues.
  • Customizable
    With a wide range of configuration options, Gogs allows users to tailor the platform to meet their specific needs.

Possible disadvantages of Gogs

  • Limited Features
    Compared to more comprehensive Git platforms like GitLab or GitHub, Gogs lacks some advanced features such as built-in CI/CD pipelines and extensive integrations.
  • Smaller Community
    Gogs has a smaller user base compared to more popular platforms, which can lead to fewer third-party plugins, extensions, and external resources.
  • Scalability
    While Gogs is suitable for small to medium environments, it might not scale as effectively for large enterprises with extensive requirements.
  • Support
    Being an open-source project, Gogs primarily relies on community support, which may not be as immediate or extensive compared to commercial platforms offering professional support services.
  • User Interface
    While functional, Gogs' user interface is not as polished or feature-rich as those of some other Git service platforms.

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

Gogs videos

No Gogs videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GitHub Desktop and Gogs)
Git
75 75%
25% 25
Code Collaboration
72 72%
28% 28
Git Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Project Management
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 Gogs

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

Gogs Reviews

The Top 10 GitHub Alternatives
Lightweight: Gogs has low minimal requirements and can run on an inexpensive Raspberry Pi. Some users even run Gogs instances on their NAS devices, making it one of the few GitHub alternatives that can help you justify to your partner why you’re getting a NAS device apart from for pulling the latest episodes from your favourite anime show.
Gitea - Alternative to GitLab and GitHub
That said, Gita/Gogs is pretty. And might hold the hand of people only used to github. It is great that it is self-contained as a binary, so can be used with minimal configuration, like other front-ends.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, GitHub Desktop should be more popular than Gogs. It has been mentiond 135 times since March 2021. 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 / 4 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 / 6 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 / 7 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 / 8 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 / 11 months ago
View more

Gogs mentions (28)

  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    Gogs: An easy-to-setup self-hosted Git service. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Go's old $GOPATH story for development and dependencies
    Yeah, I'm actually doing that with Gitea: https://about.gitea.com/ Some people went with the forgejo fork: https://forgejo.org/ though Gitea itself was a fork of Gogs, if I remember correctly: https://gogs.io/ I also ran GitLab in the past: https://about.gitlab.com/ but keeping it updated and giving it enough resources for it to be happy was troublesome. There's also GitBucket: https://gitbucket.github.io/ and... - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Forgejo forks its own path forward
    > Gitea but the other one Wouldn't that also be Gogs? https://gogs.io/ I remember when that one was what a lot of people were looking into, before the Gitea fork happened. It's odd to see how this has happened yet again, but I guess is a good thing that it's even possible in the first place, if there are indeed differing values and goals? - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: Gitlab or Gitea for self-hosting Git?
    I did use https://gogs.io/ in the past. Was nice. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Beware Offers of “Help” with Your Projects
    This reminds me of Gogs [0], where the original author refused a lot of good ideas and improvements, eventually leading to a fork [1] that's now a lot more popular and active than the original. [0] https://gogs.io/ [1] https://gitea.io/en-us/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

GitLab - Create, review and deploy code together with GitLab open source git repo management software | GitLab

SourceTree - Mac and Windows client for Mercurial and Git.

Gitea - A painless self-hosted Git service

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

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.