GitUI

22,541 stars — tracking started 2026-10-02. Check back in a few days for growth history.

A terminal UI for git written in Rust, built for speed on very large repositories.

What it does

GitUI gives git a keyboard-driven terminal interface — staging and unstaging files or individual hunks, branch and stash management, commit history browsing and search, and commit rewording — without leaving the terminal. It was created by Stephan Dilly (originally hosted at extrawurst/gitui); the project has since moved to the gitui-org GitHub organization, which is what this page links to.

Why people use it

• Staging individual hunks is first-class, not an afterthought
• Built in Rust on git2, so it's notably fast and memory-light even on repositories with very long histories
• Keyboard-only, terminal-native workflow — no mouse, no GUI dependency
• GPG commit signing, fuzzy commit search, and customizable themes/keybindings

Pros

• Handles very large repository histories smoothly, which is a known weak point for some other terminal git UIs
• Actively maintained with an org-backed GitHub project rather than a single maintainer's side project
• Clear tabbed layout (status, log, stashing) makes everyday staging and committing fast once the keybindings are learned

Cons

• Younger and less feature-complete than Tig for pure history archaeology (blame across renames, complex log filters)
• Rust toolchain/binary distribution means it's a heavier install on some older or minimal systems than a plain ncurses tool

Related Grove

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