GitHub Desktopvs
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GitHub Desktop
A free, open source Git client from GitHub for Windows and macOS that covers common workflows rather than all of Git.
As of 30 August 2026, GitHub Desktop is free to use. GitHub Desktop handles clone, branch, commit, push and pull requests with a good diff view, and deliberately stops there; anything else sends you to the command line. Softwr lists it under Technology. GitHub Desktop is made by GitHub Inc (Microsoft), launched in 2008, available on Windows, macOS.
Overview
What GitHub Desktop does
GitHub Desktop is a desktop Git client built and published by GitHub. It is an Electron application, open source under the MIT licence in the github/desktop repository, and it ships for Windows 10 and later and for macOS. It authenticates against GitHub.com, GitHub Enterprise Cloud and GitHub Enterprise Server, including organisations that enforce SAML single sign-on, and it will also clone, fetch and push against any other Git remote, it simply will not show you pull requests or checks for one. What distinguishes it is what it leaves out. Most Git GUIs try to expose the whole command surface; GitHub Desktop exposes a curated subset (stage by line, commit, branch, merge, open a pull request, see its checks) and hands everything else to the terminal. That is a real advantage when the people using it are not engineers, because there are few ways to reach a state they cannot explain. The commercial consequence is that its roadmap is GitHub's priority list, and it sits a long way below the web product, Actions and Copilot on that list. A gap you find today is likely to still be there in a year, and the issue tracker has requests measured in years rather than months. It is bought, in the sense that it is adopted, by teams who need non-specialists in a repository: designers committing assets, technical writers editing docs, analysts maintaining a config file, and new engineers in their first weeks. The trade-off is twofold. The tool does not teach Git, so the first time a rebase goes wrong the person using it has no model of what happened and needs someone else, and there is no official Linux build at all, so an organisation with Linux workstations cannot standardise on it and ends up supporting two tools.
What people use it for
- Onboarding designers or technical writers who need to commit to a docs or assets repository without learning the command line
- A new engineer's first weeks, where seeing the diff and the branch state visually prevents the common early mistakes
- Reviewing a colleague's pull request branch locally with a readable diff before approving it
- Small teams standardised entirely on GitHub who want SSO-backed authentication to work without managing personal access tokens by hand
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about GitHub Desktop.
- There is no official Linux build; the application ships for Windows and macOS only, and the community fork at shiftkey/desktop that packages it for Linux is maintained separately and lags official releases, so a mixed-OS team cannot standardise on one client.
- Submodules are effectively unsupported: the app shows a submodule change as an opaque single line and gives you no way to initialise, update or navigate into it, so any repository using them needs the terminal anyway.
- History rewriting is limited to squashing and reordering local commits by drag and drop; interactive rebase, fixup chains, editing an old commit's contents and bisect are all absent, which is exactly the set of operations a beginner needs help with most.
- Pull request features only exist for GitHub remotes, so a team on GitLab or Bitbucket gets a plain Git client with an empty pull request pane and no review or checks view at all.
- Commit signing with a key that requires a passphrase generally fails, because the app cannot surface the pinentry prompt, and the resulting error message does not say that is the cause.
- GitHub staffs it lightly compared with its web and CI products, so long-standing feature requests and bugs sit open for years; if you file an issue you should plan around it rather than expect a fix.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of GitHub Desktop
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
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Pricing
What GitHub Desktop costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- Git repository management
- GitHub integration
- Visual diff tools
- Branch management
- Pull request creation
- Issue tracking
Capabilities
Features
Line-level staging
Select individual lines or hunks within a file to include in a commit
Branch and merge UI
Create, switch, compare and merge branches without typing commands
Pull request integration
Open a pull request from the current branch and see its CI checks in the app
Enterprise authentication
Signs in to GitHub.com, GitHub Enterprise Cloud and GitHub Enterprise Server, including SAML SSO
Squash and reorder
Combine or reorder local commits by dragging them in the history list
Drag cherry-pick
Copy a commit onto another branch by dragging it between branches
Co-author attribution
Adds Co-authored-by trailers through a UI field for pairing credit
Editor and shell handoff
Opens the repository in your configured editor or terminal for anything the GUI does not cover
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is there a Linux version?
Not an official one. GitHub ships Windows and macOS builds only. A community fork, shiftkey/desktop, produces Linux packages, but it is maintained by volunteers and trails the official releases.
Does it work with GitLab or Bitbucket?
For plain Git operations, yes: you can clone, commit, push and pull against any remote. The pull request, review and checks features only work against GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise.
What does it cost?
Nothing. It is free and the source is published under the MIT licence, and it is separate from any GitHub plan you may or may not pay for.
Will it handle submodules?
No. Submodule changes appear as an unreadable single-line diff and there are no controls for initialising or updating them. Repositories that use submodules need the command line.
Do I still need to learn Git?
For everyday work, no. For recovery, yes. Anything beyond the curated set of operations, including interactive rebase and reflog recovery, happens in the terminal, so a team using it should have at least one person who knows Git properly.
Does it work with GitHub Enterprise Server?
Yes. It signs in to GitHub Enterprise Server and GitHub Enterprise Cloud as well as GitHub.com, and it honours organisations that enforce SAML single sign-on.
Behind it
Who makes GitHub Desktop
- Company
- GitHub Inc (Microsoft)
- Based in
- San Francisco, CA, USA
Timeline
GitHub Desktop over time
Keep looking
Where to go from GitHub Desktop
- GitHub Desktop alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- GitHub Desktop pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- GitHub Desktop badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Technology softwareThe full category
- Best Technology softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Technology software for
Compare GitHub Desktop with
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- Dropbox
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for GitHub Desktop, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on GitHub Desktop
GitHub Desktop alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
GitHub Desktop pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare GitHub Desktop
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