Gitbox App Reviews

I was very happy with gitbox for over a year — until one day all the panels in the app went blank, and the Add Repository button was inactive. I tried deleting/reinstalling the app, deleting its preferences, everything, no luck. Can’t find any way to revive it. Three emails to the developer went unanswered, so I guess I’ll go buy another git app.

This is a great app, but it’s stability is faltering as OS X updates around it. Since updating to Mountain Lion and then Mavericks, Gitbox has become slower and buggier. The app crashes often. Repos will get stuck permanently `git fetch`ing. I have to restart the app after adding a repo to the sidebar to see any of it’s details (branches, commits, remotes). If these issues would be fixed, and the app was updated more often, I’d definitely give it a 5-star as it’s beautiful and simple. Update: It’s been nearly 2 years since this app has been updated, and I can no longer start it up. I think it’s time to declare this app officially dead. I moved a repository without first checking with the app. It crashed, and won’t start up again.

This app has apparently been abandoned and is no longer being actively developed. There has been no update in nearly six months from the devs, and they won’t respond to customer information requests via twitter. I use this app every day but would not recommend anyone buy it new unless they start communicating better.

I’ve tried almost every Git app known to man (Github for Mac, Tower, Git X, Git Y, etc. on and on) … Gitbox is awesome. The only feature I really, really, really wish this app had was per line staging. Imagine right-clicking a file & seeing “Select lines to stage” in the contextual menu … it would be so nice. Come on, Oleg ;)

I think the developer has abandoned this product which is a shame because it was very good. In OS 10.9 there are a variety of errors that require removing the preferences files (and losing all of your repos) to get it to start working again. Don’t waste your $15 on abandonware.

Been using for a while now and have tried every other git client. Gitbox is hands down the best I’ve used. All the main features you need in a nice, clean UI. Excellent keyboard shortcuts and diff integration. It’s one of the first apps I install on a new machine. Highly recommend.

I’m pretty good with Git in terminal but after using Gitbox for a while I could not go back. It is super clean and everything you need to know about your repo is available at a single glance. The user interface is incredibly well designed. I’m shocked how simple Oleg was able to keep the UI and yet give you the ability to see just about EVERYTHING you may need. Also, the most common actions you’d like to perform with your repo are right there in front of you and you need to only push a button. This app is absolutely AWESOME.

Lack of updates since 2012 leads to problems. If the upcoming default push behavior (push.default = simple) is included in the .gitconfig file (as advised by recent versions of Git like 1.8 in Mavericks), Gitbox does not understand it and silently fails to update the status of local repos. Only explicit push request brings up the error dialog complaining about an “error” in the configuration file. The solution is to revert to one of the old behaviors - push.default = matching - old default, can be dangerous - or push.default = upstream - close to the new default.

GitBox is a really nice git client for Mac. Although I have comfortably worked with git on the command line for years, I find myself popping open GitBox quite often. The intuitive design makes GitBox easy to use git even for git beginners. It’s worth every cent and more.

Gitbox is a very nice frontend for git. It provides the usual simple functionality for the most common use cases of git version control. There’s still going to be a number of cases where you need to resort to command line git. But gitbox does provide a nice overview. The number one nuisance with gitbox is the high frequency of sudden crashes. Gitbox crashes on me about 10 times day. And restarting gitbox usually just makes it crash again. But IF gitbox works, it’s pretty useful. Merge support is also quite suboptimal. It shows a nice diff but then gives no reasonable integration on how to merge. That should be thought out better to be useful. So git command line is your friend for merging.

My git needs are pretty simple. I create git repositories for each project I work on, save versions as I go, use Dropbox to sync my various computers, and sometimes have to climb back into a previously saved version of something to rescue some data or compare some files. I dont use collaboration tools and I dont do anything with branches. For these simple needs, Gitbox is perfect. Im not a command line junkie, and I never could make sense of git on the command line. Ive tried various GUI apps to help me use git, and Gitbox has been hands-down the most intuitive and simplest to use. Yay, I dont have to stop being productive while I sink into a git learning curve. I can just use Gitbox and move on. Drag a folder onto the Gitbox window and it gets converted into a git repo. Stage all files (its a one-click process in Gitbox, just right-click on the list of files and choose Stage All). Press the Commit button and there you go. I couldnt be happier with it.

It’s nice for getting started quickly. It can be helpful. However, it looks dated as it still lacks retina icons, and clearly is going to need work on the upcoming version of Mac OS. I hope the developer gets back to work, because I’d like to see it kept up.

This app hasn’t been updated for at least 2 years. I had some crushes when using diff and it’s quite annoying.

Have been using/trying to use this app for a while. I would love for it to be my primary Git GUI. But it just flakes out occassionally with little rhyme or reason. Right now on my main computer it displays a repo as just empty. No revisions, no notes, no nothing. Try wiping preferences, reinstalling app, etc, no joy. But it works mostly. happily on my laptop. Have sent in a bug report/support request too, no response. May just be that it hasn’t been updated in 2+ years? Buyer beware. Promise, but not reality yet.

Was great back when it worked. The app now crashes when cloning repositories. Emailed the developer asking for advice, never received a reply. Emailed again asking for a refund, never recieved a reply.

Unfortunately, this app doesn’t work reliably anymore since OSX 10.9. The main window won’t appear. Somehow the preferences file gets corrupted and it won’t work. It’s too bad, this was a great app and when it worked, it was really easy to use. I had to drop my 5 star rating down to 1 star because of this.

Nothing more need be said. So simple, yet so very functional.

So much easier to use than the other git clients. Makes your day to day usage of git a breeze. No, it doesnt do everything git can do, and thats a _good_ thing. —— Update: 2014 —— Ridiculously this is still probably the best git client, but it hasn’t been updated in _2_years_. Crazy. Now it’s beginning to pick up issues like odd visual bugs in Yosemite, ocassionally forgetting about all your git history due to the “new” (It’s a year old at this point) simple config. An update will need to happen soon, or we’ll have to find something else!

I rated this five stars based on how I use it: as a supplement to the command line. If you are looking for a do-it-all git program that possibly saves you from understanding what you are doing, this program is probably not it. If you are able to do git work on the command line but would like a to supplement some tasks with a GUI, this app is great. I use it for watching my staging area and for committing. The GUI makes it easy to see what’s staged and what isn’t, and more importantly, lets me launch FileDiff on each file with a double-click so that before I commit I can give each file that last once-over to be sure I haven’t left in any stray debug calls or TODO comments. I can easily run backwards in history and do the same for previous commits, and I find it just faster and smoother for this sort of thing than the command line or viewing on GitHub. It can do much more than this, and I sometimes use those other features, but the main reason I value and recommend Gitbox is that it’s such a great tool for reviewing staged or committed changes. In comparison with the open-source GitX I prefer Gitbox for the tasks I mentioned above. It’s straightforward, lightweight, stays out of my way, and doesn’t go into weird resource-consumption spasms like GitX sometimes does. I tend to reserve GitX for those times when I really need its branch-visualization capabilities, which Gitbox does not match.

This application was awesome; however, it is no longer actively maintained (last update in 2012). For the last year, it continually crashes making it unusable. What a shame. If it was made stable again, I would give it 5 stars.