GitHub Desktop is garbage - hot take

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#1

And this is why we don’t use GitHub Desktop…

I mean seriously… this should have been in since day 1.

Thankfully you can do it direct from Visual Studio, which is actually a better git UI client than GitHub Desktop. And of course from SourceTree, Fork, or whichever other poison you choose.

I do not even recommend GitHub Desktop for people who are new to git under the claim of “well if it has less features it is probably easier to get going / onboarded”, because its UI layout is also crooked (e.g. viewing commit history of branches) and has been lacking other basic features like being able to delete a branch.

But not even being able to create a tag until now, which is basically just an adhoc label, is crazy.

Takeaways:

  • Don’t use GitHub Desktop
  • By all means use GitHub (the server) though; that’s fabulous
  • Pretty much any other client is better than GitHub Desktop (recommendations are Fork and then SourceTree from me, if you can use them, full disclaimer: GitKraken is probably great too, but I don’t have the experience with it to recommend it).
  • This wasn’t meant to be a rant by the way, it’s just really hard to say anything nice about GitHub Desktop!
4 Likes
#2

Agreed

#3

There’s also no obvious way to discard changes or stash changes like in sourcetree.

#4

I only ever used git from the console. I feel like I don’t understand what the benefit of doing it any other way is. The GUI’s are usually just too confusing for me.

2 Likes
#5

Nothing wrong with using the command prompt; one place I find the GUI faster though is in quick compares/ diffs between branches and commits, things like that can’t be done as well through the command prompt alone.

#6

Reviewing blame history views is a bit nicer also. Cosmetics mainly.

#7

Meanwhile I’m over here using the command line 90% of the time.

But yes, GitHub desktop is pretty awful for a git GUI.

#8

That makes sense. Pick your poison, or necessary evil I guess, lol.

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