I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I use Git in my day-to-day work, and I’ve realized I still default to the terminal for just about everything Git-related. For me, there’s something satisfying about typing out commands and getting immediate feedback, especially when I’m doing things like rebasing, cherry-picking, or fixing up commits.
But then I started wondering… am I just stuck in my ways? There are so many GUIs and tools out there that streamline Git workflows—tools like GitKraken, SourceTree, and even VS Code’s built-in Git integration. Some of them look slick, and I know they make things easier for a lot of people, but I can’t seem to break away from the terminal. Maybe it’s the control freak in me!
So here’s my question: Do you still use Git in the terminal, or have you switched to using a tool? If you’ve made the switch, what’s your favorite Git tool? I’d love to know what everyone’s using these days. Maybe I’ll find something new to try out!
Drop your thoughts below—I’m genuinely curious to hear what’s working for you.
I’ve been telling all the juniors we have, that they’re free to use a GUI tool, but they do not get around learning the CLI. If you fuck up or Git breaks, you’ll need to look up how to unfuck it and that’s where the only help you find is for the CLI.
In particular, it’s also been my experience that you rapidly come into a situation where suddenly you’re the Git expert and need to help others. If you only know one specific GUI, you can only help others who use that GUI. If you know the CLI, you can help anyone.
It also happens that you need to interact with Git repos on a server where you simply won’t have a GUI.
And yeah, given that whole opinion, personally I seriously do not care to learn a GUI in addition to the CLI.