
GitKraken
SourceTree
Fork
SmartGit
Tower
TortoiseGit
GitHub
GitHub Desktop is a seamless way to contribute to projects on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise.

SmartGit
tig
GitKraken
SourceTree
git-cola
Fork
TortoiseGit
Front-end to the git revision control system for emacs.

Which is more popular?
Based on our record, GitHub Desktop seems to be a lot more popular than Magit. While we know about 136 links to GitHub Desktop, we've tracked only 6 mentions of Magit.
Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.
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| Website | desktop.github.com | github.com |
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What each product offers, as listed by its team.


Possible disadvantages
Possible disadvantages
An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.


No analysis of GitHub Desktop yet.
Overall verdict
Why this product is good
Recommended for
Developers and software engineers who use Emacs as their primary text editor, especially those who are looking for a powerful and efficient way to manage Git repositories without leaving their editor.
Walkthroughs and reviews on video.
GitHub Desktop 2.0 -- Easy Mode Version Control
More videos
Magit Introduction and Demonstration
More videos
How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.


Share your experience with using GitHub Desktop and Magit. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.


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 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...
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...
Magit is not a separate Git desktop client – it is a free plugin with an original text-based interface. It is implemented as a GNU Emacs package to use on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The plugin allows the developers to...
Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.


Optional: You can also download GitHub Desktop (https://desktop.github.com) if you prefer a GUI version, but this guide focuses on Git Bash to understand the basics. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
Download the latest version from the GitHub Desktop website. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
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... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
There're multiple solutions like this and I've used some of them over the past years. - There's obviously the fantastic Magit (https://github.com/magit/magit) I did use this for a long time but recently switched over to LazyGit for the... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
If you use magit, it has magit-wip-mode to automatically commit changes to tracked files in working and index trees into wip refs per branch. Source: about 4 years ago
Magit because it's a great git frontend. Source: about 4 years ago
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Mac and Windows client for Mercurial and Git.
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TIG Software Updates & Expansions. Download the most up-to-date, innovative software solutions for your TIG welder instantly to a memory card for enhanced performance.
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Build Better Software. Over 100,000 developers and designers are more productive with Tower - the most powerful Git client for Mac and Windows.
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