I use https://github.com/jonas/tig for interactive staging and git CLI for everything else. Best of both worlds and I don't have to leave the terminal.
In Oh shit, git: Getting myself out of bad situationsjonas
tig
C2013–2026
jonas / tig
tig
Text-mode interface for git
44Distinct people
47Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
13.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Text-mode interface for git
GitHub
Where it is used
The source check is incomplete. Verified examples will appear here.
What people are saying
For people interested in magit-like features, but don’t use Emacs, I highly recommend tig (https://github.com/jonas/tig). Here’s a tweet with a quick video with me using it…
robenkleene used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- fredriknoren/ungit · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- ggreer/the_silver_searcher · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- tpope/vim-fugitive · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:02:05 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year47 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2013-06-07 09:08:15 UTC to 2026-04-02 11:34:14 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 12, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Tig: text-mode interface for Git
What is Tig?
Tig is an ncurses-based text-mode interface for git. It functions mainly
as a Git repository browser, but can also assist in staging changes for
commit at chunk level and act as a pager for output from various Git
commands.
Resources
Homepage: https://github.com/jonas/tig
Manual: https://www.mankier.com/7/tigmanual
Tarballs: https://github.com/jonas/tig/releases
Q&A: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tig
Bugs and Feature Requests
Bugs and feature requests can be reported using the
issue tracker or by mail to the
Git mailing list. Ensure that the word
"tig" is in the subject. For other Tig related questions please use
Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tig.
If you are sending a bug report, please include the following information:
What Tig and ncurses versions are you using?
(tig -v)
What system do you have?
(uname -a, lsb_release -a)
What Git version are you using?
(git -v)
Installation and News
Information on how to build and install Tig are found in
the installation instructions.
News about releases and latest features and bug fixes are found in
the release notes.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
8 sourcesI'd like to also point out tig.
"Tig is an ncurses-based text-mode interface for git"
It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of a GUI, but if you need to look at all the branches, and commits to a repository. tig is an excellent tool. tig doesn't issue any commands though, its only a browser, you'll still need to know the CLI. (essentially a ncurses version of gitk)
I'm normally in a ssh session on a remote box where my compile & run cycles happen. tig is curses based, so no X11 needed, filled in a really nice itch of mine.
[1] https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Oh shit, git: Getting myself out of bad situationsIt looks like tig: https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Git: Using Advanced Rebase Features for a Clean RepositoryNo one's perfect with this stuff.
If you don't believe me, clone git itself ($ git clone https://github.com/git/git) and open up the repo in tig(1)
https://github.com/jonas/tig
To be honest, I only in the past 2 years even bothered to view ($ git log --graph). Regardless of --graph getting wide now and then, I always visualize my git history as a straight line.
Also, sometimes having a non-linear history is inevitable. Especially in large open source projects where you're pulling in patches to a branch, and patches on top of that. You're not always going to be merging a branch with a single author straight onto master.
Despite posts like this (http://www.bitsnbites.eu/a-tidy-linear-git-history/) encouraging good git hygiene, I've had multiple open source projects merge in code via GitHub and never had negative consequence for it :P
Maybe
Read the rest
there are corner cases where git bisect wouldn't work? Though I never used git bisect even once. Most I do is scroll through tig and view diffs. Also used to play with a cool git plugin in vim (https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive).
Also, GitHub has (since that linear git history post) introduced Rebase + Merge https://github.com/blog/2243-rebase-and-merge-pull-requests. I think that'll get you what you want.
I do keep branches ("pull requests" if you're using GH lingo) up to date with ($ git pull --rebase). That does mean a force push ($ git push --force), but it's ok if it's your personal branch. I also use interactive mode ($ git rebase -i <sha>) to edit/blend multiple commits.
Also, when I do merge, if I go through CLI, I'll preserve the history of the branch by not doing fast forwards ($ git merge <branch> --no-ff).
I know it's not a GUI (you'd class it as a TUI, I guess), but Tig is fantastic. I use it in combination with the command line, mainly for quickly viewing recent commits, diffs and staging hunks.
https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Git v2.14.0 releasedDid you try tig [1]? I prefer the command line solution to shoving complicated things and UI (which fugitive is -- I could barely remmeber all the features I had and like you, I only really ever used the :Gblame command the most) into vim. I prefer to have vim be lightweight and let other tools do their job (i.e the UNIX way).
I don't use fugitive now but I do make full use of tig. In my .vimrc I have:
nnoremap <leader>gb :echo system("git rev-parse --abbrev-ref @ <bar> tr -d '\n'")<CR>
nnoremap <leader>go :silent !tig<CR>:silent redraw!<CR>
nnoremap <leader>gB :silent !tig blame % +<C-r>=expand(line('.'))<CR><CR>:silent redraw!<CR>
The above solution leaves vim purely for editing, and tig for doing the actual git presentation.
Asciinema demo of tig blame: https://asciinema.org/a/4as7ujt8cpnpyx0doyrervatl
Just like fugitive,
Read the rest
I can travel back and forth through history. And if I hit q, I'm back in vim.
[1]: https://github.com/jonas/tig
There are some good tips there, like using GPG. I am definitively going to get that set up for my project.
Now, I always merge with no fast-forward because it creates a commit for the merge that you can revert.
git merge --no-ff
Then, I always pull with rebase... That will apply your changes on top of the remote ones. It may lead to conflicts but it leads to a log with less branches.
git pull --rebase
The merge/diff tool I use is p4diff, which comes with P4V (Perforce visual client) and is free.
To explore the git log, I use tig.
https://github.com/jonas/tig
It is a curses interface to git. Screenshot: https://atlassianblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/tig-2....
In Better Git configurationtig. It's been under active development for over 10 years now. https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M