A native Git client for macOS that doesn't ship a browser.
14 MB. One process. ~95 MB of RAM with a repository open.
No account, no telemetry, no sign-in wall.
brew install zjywill/tap/thegitOr download the DMG — universal, 4.9 MB, no toolchain needed. Install details, including the first-launch Gatekeeper prompt, are below.
The mainstream desktop clients ship a browser to draw a commit graph. GitKraken is an Electron app: Chromium, Node, and a fleet of helper processes, all resident before it has read a single commit.
TheGit is a single native SwiftUI process that shells out to git. That's the
whole architecture, and it's the whole performance story.
| TheGit | GitKraken | |
|---|---|---|
| Application bundle | 14 MB (universal) | 621 MB |
| Release DMG | 4.9 MB | — |
| Processes at rest | 1 | 7+ |
| Resident memory, repo open | ~95 MB | ~1.6 GB |
| Chromium bundled | none | 261 MB |
Where that shows up in use:
- Launch is instant — no Chromium bootstrap, no splash screen.
- Nothing indexes in the background — an FSEvents watcher decides when state actually changed, instead of a timer polling every repo you ever opened.
- The graph is laid out in Swift, not in a DOM — one pass over the commit
list (
Core/GraphLayout.swift), drawn with SwiftUI shapes. - Scrolling and zoom are AppKit's — five zoom levels relayout natively instead of scaling a web view.
It drives the git binary you already have. No embedded Git engine, no daemon,
no service in the middle: your credential helper, SSH keys and hooks work
exactly as they do in the terminal.
The trade is deliberate — TheGit is macOS-only and does exactly what git
does. It won't grow a cross-platform UI toolkit or a built-in issue tracker.
Measured on macOS 26.5 / Apple M4 Pro with one mid-size repository open; GitKraken's figures are summed across all its processes. Measure your own with Activity Monitor.
🌳 A commit graph you can read. Branch lines carry their own color rather than inheriting a lane's, so a branch stays one color for its whole life even when lanes get reused. Uncommitted work shows up as a dashed WIP node at the top, connected to HEAD.
🪟 Three panes, one screen. Branches left, graph middle, staging right. Click a file and the diff overlays the graph instead of shoving the panes around; Esc goes back.
📚 Everything in the sidebar. Local and remote branches in a foldable tree
with the current branch pinned on top, plus Tags, Stashes, Worktrees,
Submodules, Git LFS, and — if gh or glab is logged in — your open
Pull/Merge Requests.
✅ Staging that matches how you work. Stage or unstage per file or all at
once, discard, ignore (repo-wide or .git/info/exclude), stash just the staged
or just the unstaged, create a patch from a file's changes, amend.
🔀 Branch operations without the man page. Merge, rebase, cherry-pick, revert, reset, fast-forward, tag, push/pull/fetch, set upstream, create a worktree — from the context menus. When a merge or rebase stops on a conflict, you get Continue and Abort plus "take ours / take theirs" per file.
🧹 Cleanup. Finds branches whose PR is merged, branches squash-merged into the default branch, branches whose upstream is gone, and stale worktrees — counts the commits that would be lost, and deletes nothing until you click.
🤖 AI commit messages (optional, off by default). Point it at any OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible provider and Generate turns your staged diff into a commit message — Conventional Commits or a plain summary, in English, Chinese, or whatever the repo already uses. The API key goes in the login keychain, never UserDefaults.
👀 It notices changes made elsewhere. Commit, checkout or edit from a terminal and the view refreshes itself.
🗂️ Multiple repositories in tabs, and five UI zoom levels (⌘= / ⌘- / ⌘0).
TheGit talks to exactly two things by default: the git binary and your
filesystem. Three features can reach the network, and you control all three:
| Feature | Reaches | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Author avatars | Gravatar, GitHub | Off — View menu |
| AI commit messages | the provider you configured | Off — Settings |
| Update check | api.github.com, once per launch |
On — one request, no identifiers |
Pull request listing uses the gh / glab CLI you already authenticated;
TheGit never handles those tokens itself.
brew install zjywill/tap/thegitThe formula builds from source on your machine, which is deliberate: a build you produced yourself is never quarantined, so nothing has to be talked past Gatekeeper. A first build takes a minute or two and needs an Xcode 15+ toolchain.
Homebrew can't write to /Applications, so copy the bundle there yourself:
cp -R "$(brew --prefix thegit)/TheGit.app" /Applications/A copy, not a symlink — Spotlight indexes neither the Homebrew prefix nor the target of a symlink, and the app would never show up in search.
Every release ships a universal .dmg on the
Releases page — no
toolchain, no Homebrew.
TheGit isn't signed with an Apple Developer ID yet, so macOS blocks the first launch with "TheGit can't be opened". That's Gatekeeper refusing an unnotarised download, not a problem with the app, and it happens once:
- Open the DMG and drag TheGit to Applications.
- Try to open it; macOS refuses.
- System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, Open Anyway.
Or skip the dialog entirely:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/TheGit.appIf that trade doesn't appeal, use Homebrew — building from source never hits it.
TheGit tells you when a new release exists: it asks GitHub at launch (at most every six hours) and shows a one-line banner if there's a newer version. It never downloads or installs anything by itself — the banner links to the release page, and dismissing it silences that version for good. Check for Updates… in the TheGit menu asks on demand.
brew update && brew upgrade thegit
rm -rf /Applications/TheGit.app && cp -R "$(brew --prefix thegit)/TheGit.app" /Applications/Quit TheGit first — a running app keeps its old bundle. brew update must
report "Updated 1 tap"; "Already up-to-date" means the tap never moved.
Let an AI agent install it for you
Using Claude Code, Codex, or any agent with a terminal? Paste this:
Install TheGit (https://github.com/zjywill/TheGit), a native macOS Git
client, on this Mac via Homebrew:
1. brew install zjywill/tap/thegit
— builds from source, needs an Xcode 15+ toolchain; if Homebrew says the
tap is untrusted, run: brew trust --formula zjywill/tap/thegit
2. Copy the app where Finder and Spotlight can see it (a symlink is NOT
enough — Spotlight won't index it):
rm -rf /Applications/TheGit.app && cp -R "$(brew --prefix thegit)/TheGit.app" /Applications/
3. Verify: brew list --versions thegit, then open /Applications/TheGit.app
If it's already installed, upgrade instead: quit TheGit, run
brew update && brew upgrade thegit, then redo step 2.
Homebrew tap trust, versions, uninstall
Homebrew 6 asks you to trust third-party taps. Installing by full name records that trust; if a later command says the tap is being ignored:
brew trust --formula zjywill/tap/thegitWhich version you're on:
brew list --versions thegitUninstall:
brew uninstall thegit && brew untap zjywill/tapThat doesn't touch the copy in /Applications — remove it with
rm -rf /Applications/TheGit.app. Your settings (the com.zjywill.TheGit
defaults domain) and the API key in the login keychain survive both an
upgrade and an uninstall; delete them by hand for a clean slate.
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
giton yourPATH- Xcode 15+ / Swift 5.9 toolchain to build (not needed for the DMG)
- Optional:
git-lfs, andghorglabfor pull requests
Build it yourself
scripts/bundle.sh # universal dist/TheGit.app + dist/TheGit-<version>.dmg
swift run # run from source
swift test # testsUseful knobs: UNIVERSAL=0 builds for this Mac only, DMG=0 assembles the
.app and stops, DEST=… picks the output directory. The bundle is ad-hoc
signed — enough to run on your own Mac and on any Mac you copy it to by
hand, not enough for network distribution, where Gatekeeper wants a Developer
ID and notarisation.
Project layout
Sources/TheGit/
Core/ git invocation, parsers, graph layout, LFS, forge CLIs, AI
State/ AppState (open repos) and RepoState (one repository)
UI/ sidebar, graph, diffs, commit panel, settings
Tests/ parser, graph, cleanup and repo integration tests
scripts/ bundle.sh (app + DMG), release.sh (tag + release + tap),
make-icon.py, sync-providers.py
The AI provider catalog in Sources/TheGit/Resources/providers.json is
generated and committed; scripts/sync-providers.py regenerates it and is only
run to refresh the list.
MIT © 2026 Junyi Zhang