tig
(That's git backwards)
It's a luxury and you don't need it if you use something like fugitive in vim, but its a lovely little tool.
https://github.com/jonas/tig
Think SourceTree but on the command line.
In Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?jonas
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, 2:59:58 PM 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
10 sourcesTmux: https://github.com/tmux/tmux/
fish-shell: https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/
ranger: https://github.com/ranger/ranger/
tig: https://github.com/jonas/tig/
ag or rg: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
And all my configurations, especially for fish-shell: http://github.com/c02y/dotfiles
In Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?fzf is awesome. I use it in vim and bash.
https://www.tecmint.com/fzf-fuzzy-file-search-from-linux-ter...
----
I use the Silver Searcher all the time. Very fast.
https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher
----
tig, a text mode interface for git.
https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?But why? There are so many awesome tools like tig and magit!
- https://github.com/jonas/tig
- https://magit.vc/
In Show HN: I made a tool that made me faster at GitAwesome work OP! I’m a big fan of using tools like this to supplement git, especially when it comes to some of the more complex operations.
Personally I use tig, which is basically this but different. I used to use Sourcetree and I loved it but it slowed to a crawl with bigger projects with long histories.
https://github.com/jonas/tig
Best screenshots I can find on google are ironically from the Atlassian blog:
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/git/git-tig
In Show HN: I made a tool that made me faster at GitI love tig https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Ask HN: What are your favorite terminal programs?It's a text interface for git. Great for quickly navigating around a repo and, the thing I use it for most, staging individual lines/hunks
https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Ask HN: What are your favorite terminal programs?Its a CLI interface for git.
https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Ask HN: What are your favorite terminal programs?Have you seen projects like Git Cola or tig? I aliased `gl` (formerly `git log`) to `tig`.
https://git-cola.github.io/
https://github.com/jonas/tig
In Why SQLite Does Not Use GitUnderstanding that in git 'branches' are not really the branches but merely post-its that can trivially moved between the 'real' branches on the tree of commits really opened my eyes. Along with the use of visual tools like https://github.com/gitx/gitx, https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit, https://github.com/jonas/tig and aliases like `log --oneline --decorate -50 --all --graph --remotes`.
It really changes Git from a bunch of vague commands to a toolkit that you can use to apply the changes you desire on the database and worktree.
But even then I still get confused as the concepts of Git are not well translated into the commands, the various functions of reset and checkout. I think it is mentioned often before on HN but http://gitless.com/ is an good approach to create a new API/concepts on top of the same internals.
In Key Git Concepts Explained the Hard Way