TortoiseGit
Shares rank 13 of 18 Git clients by recommenders
Power users praise its rebase and blame tools in a free Windows Git GUI. Common caveat: slow with shell integration enabled.
Power users praise its rebase and blame tools in a free Windows Git GUI. Common caveat: slow with shell integration enabled.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Power-user Git features in a GUI
“one feature of TG I've never seen equalled is how it handles what I call "drill-down git blame adventures"”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “The lazy Git UI you didn't know you need” “I've found TortoiseGit to be spectacular and I especially like its rebase dialog”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “The Git history command deserves more attention” “in terms of Git power user features in a GUI I think it's unmatched”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “The lazy Git UI you didn't know you need” Reliable Windows Git tool
“Its much nicer to have proper quality support of uniform quality, rather than having to rely on whatever you happen to be using at the time”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS” “The sole app keeping me on windows is tortoisegit”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS” Improving and decent nowadays
“I was sure the Tortoise guys would get it right eventually.”
Comment from 17 May 2026 in “Mercurial, 20 years and counting: how are we still alive and kicking? [video]” “it seems pretty decent nowadays”
Comment from 17 May 2026 in “Mercurial, 20 years and counting: how are we still alive and kicking? [video]”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow with shell integration
“Disabling it increases the number of items I can delete per second”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation” “it speeds up by 200% when I turn off that TortoiseGit option”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation”
Other Git clients people recommend
The four most recommended other Git clients, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Magit | 120 | 20 | 86% | 12 | 10 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| Sublime Merge | 22 | 1 | 96% | 10 | — | Approved |
| GitButler | 21 | 19 | 53% | 6 | — | — |
| Fork git client | 17 | 2 | 89% | 7 | — | Approved |
| TortoiseGitThis page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
All 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“TortoiseGit was very cool, and nothing stops us making more alternative UXes.”
“I've found TortoiseGit to be spectacular and I especially like its rebase dialog”
“it speeds up by 200% when I turn off that TortoiseGit option”
“Disabling it increases the number of items I can delete per second”
“I was sure the Tortoise guys would get it right eventually.”
“it seems pretty decent nowadays”
“at least back when I was doing serious development, it had quite a few problems”
“Its much nicer to have proper quality support of uniform quality, rather than having to rely on whatever you happen to be using at the time”
“I do virtually everything through tortoisegit, and much prefer it over a CLI.”
“The sole app keeping me on windows is tortoisegit”
“one feature of TG I've never seen equalled is how it handles what I call "drill-down git blame adventures"”
“they just aren't as fast for me since it requires leaving my IDE”
“in terms of Git power user features in a GUI I think it's unmatched”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.