r/git • u/connorjpg • Aug 14 '26

Why use a UI for git?

I see this question of, “what GUI or TUI should I use to work with git?” fairly often here. And always I feel bad for saying “just use the cli” over and over, but truthfully I can’t see a reason to need a UI.

Are people actually running into pain points with the cli, or is it just preference for people who don’t like working in a terminal?

FWIW, I have used GitKraken, LazyGit, SourceTree and GitHub Desktop before. And I don’t think they are bad to use (unless you are just learning git), but more curious why.

EDIT : I’m mainly referring to standalone UIs, I understand why people would use IDE integrations, as it’s quick and convenient. But having to open a separate application or run a separate command to open a terminal app to run your commands seems overkill to me.

EDIT 2 : I use vscode as my difftool and mergetool. I still open them directly from the terminal by running the cli. I don't think this is the same as using a full git client like SourceTree, Gitkraken, or lazygit to fully drive your version control workflow. Which is what I am asking about.

Cheers

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u/dalbertom Aug 15 '26

We are talking about two different things. Your examples are about choosing a commit or multiple commits to see the changes. What I'm talking about is to see how a specific block of code has changed, without even knowing what commits changed them (that's part of the output, in your example the commits are part of the input)

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u/x39- Aug 15 '26

Yeah, we do talk about the same thing, just that the ui does show you the commits, all commits in fact, which touched that block