Forkyard

A fast, local Git client for the desktop – with a real commit graph, line staging, a three-way merge tool and an Undo button for Git.

No account. No telemetry. No cloud. Your repositories stay on your machine.

Download · Features · Build from source · Contributing

Why Forkyard?

Most graphical Git clients either hide Git behind a simplified model or want you to sign in to a vendor cloud. Forkyard does neither. It drives the real git on your machine, shows you what actually happens, and makes the risky parts safe:

• Undo for Git. Reset, rebase, discard, branch delete – destructive actions create a backup ref first, so one click (or Ctrl+Z) brings your work back.
• Fast on big repositories. The commit graph is laid out in Rust and drawn on a canvas; history loads page by page, file watching and status run in the background.
• Private by design. Credentials live only in your OS keychain. No telemetry, no account, no server. Besides your own Git and host operations (and author avatars from GitHub, which you can turn off), the only automatic network request is an optional daily update check to api.github.com that sends nothing but the app version in the User-Agent – it can be switched off in Settings › About.
• Safe with unknown repositories. Repositories whose config or hooks would run programs stay locked until you trust them.

Features

History and graph Commit graph with branch lanes, merge lines, ref labels and a WIP row Search by message, SHA and author; file history and blame Compare any two commits, or a commit with your working directory Pin, hide or solo branches; smart branch visibility for large repos Collapse merges, see unpushed and unpulled commits at a glance Reflog view and bisect right in the graph Issue numbers and ticket keys in messages become links (Jira, Linear, YouTrack, Redmine or your own) Committing Stage files, hunks or single lines – CRLF, Latin-1 and missing final newlines included Amend, commit and push in one step, commit templates, co-author trailers Side-by-side and inline diff with word-level highlighting and syntax colours Image diff side by side, as a swipe, an onion skin or a pixel difference Stash single lines and hunks Built-in editor with Markdown preview

Branching and merging Drag a branch onto another to merge, rebase or open a pull request Interactive rebase: pick, reword, squash, drop and reorder Three-pane conflict tool with an editable result Conflict preview before a merge, rebase, cherry-pick or revert – without touching your files Rebase stacked branches together (--update-refs), push several branches and tags at once, delete branches on the remote Cherry-pick, revert, reset (soft/mixed/hard), stashes with names and per-file apply Everything around it Tabs for several repositories, workspaces, profiles (e.g. work and private) Settings on three levels: global, per profile, per project (identity, SSH key, pull mode) HTTPS and SSH credentials, SSH key generation, proxy and custom CA GitHub, GitLab, Gitea/Forgejo, Bitbucket Cloud and Azure DevOps: pull requests and issues through the official APIs Worktrees, submodules that follow checkouts and can be moved, Git LFS with file locks, Git Flow, commit signing (GPG/SSH), hooks Custom commands with placeholders in the palette and context menus Statistics per repository: activity, authors, hotspots, bus factor, code age Command palette, keyboard shortcuts, embedded terminal, light and dark theme A forkyard command line, and local crash reports that never leave your machine Optional daily update check against the GitHub releases: a quiet hint when a new version is out

Install

Download the installer for your system from the latest release:

System	x64 (Intel/AMD)	ARM64
Windows 10/11	.msi or -setup.exe	-setup.exe
macOS 11 or newer	_x64.dmg (Intel)	_aarch64.dmg (Apple Silicon)
Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint …)	.deb	.deb
Linux (Fedora, openSUSE, RHEL …)	.rpm	.rpm
Linux (any distribution)	.AppImage	.AppImage

SHA256SUMS.txt in every release lists the checksums. The builds are not signed with a paid certificate yet: Windows SmartScreen may ask once (“More info” → “Run anyway”), and on macOS open the app the first time with right-click → Open.

Forkyard uses the Git installed on your system (version 2.39 or newer). The interface is available in English and German.

Build from source

You need Node.js 22, a current stable Rust toolchain and Git. On Linux, install the WebKitGTK dependencies first:

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libgtk-3-dev libsoup-3.0-dev libjavascriptcoregtk-4.1-dev \
  librsvg2-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev libxdo-dev libdbus-1-dev

git clone https://github.com/abgebaumt/forkyard.git
cd forkyard
npm install
npm run app            # development build with hot reload
npm run tauri build    # installers in target/release/bundle

How it works

React UI ──invoke──▶ Tauri binding ──▶ Rust core (gitcore) ──process──▶ git
   ▲                                      ├──▶ SQLite (app state only)
   └────────── events (repo changed, jobs) ┴──▶ OS keychain (secrets)

• Git is the source of truth. Commits, refs and stashes are always read from Git, never cached in a database.
• One write at a time per repository. Reads run in parallel, background reads never take Git's lock.
• The UI never runs Git. Every operation is a typed command in the Rust core, tested against real temporary repositories.

More in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome – see CONTRIBUTING.md for the setup and the checks CI runs. Please report security problems privately as described in SECURITY.md.

License

Forkyard is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0.