tig

A text-mode interface for Git written in C. tig provides a keyboard-driven terminal UI for browsing Git history, blame, diffs, branches, and file trees — fast and works anywhere you have a terminal, including over SSH.

What is tig?

tig (by Jonas Fonseca) is a curses-based text UI for Git, primarily designed for reading and exploring repositories. It wraps common Git commands — git log, git show, git blame, git diff — in a navigable split-pane interface. You can browse commit history, inspect diffs, view file trees at any commit, read blame annotations, and search through log output, all without leaving your terminal.

tig is a popular complement to command-line workflows and terminal-centric editors. It is especially valuable on remote servers where GUI tools are unavailable. While lazygit focuses on Git operations, tig focuses on Git exploration — making it the go-to tool for understanding a repository's history.

Key Features

• Log / Main view — git log with graph lines, author, date, and subject in a scrollable list
• Diff view — split-pane diff for any selected commit, syntax-colored
• Branch / Refs view — list all local and remote branches, tags, and stashes
• Blame view — git blame with commit info and navigation to the blamed commit's diff
• Tree view — browse the file tree as it existed at any commit
• Status view — basic staging and unstaging (whole files, not hunks)
• Search — '/' to search within any view, 'n'/'N' to navigate matches
• Custom key bindings — bind any shell command or git operation to a key in ~/.tigrc

Installation

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install tig

# Ubuntu / Debian
apt install tig

# Fedora / RHEL
dnf install tig

# Arch Linux
pacman -S tig

# Windows (Scoop)
scoop install tig

# Build from source
git clone https://github.com/jonas/tig
cd tig && make && sudo make install

Essential Keybindings

Common tig Commands

# Open tig in the current repo (main log view)
tig

# Browse a specific branch
tig main

# Browse commits affecting a specific file
tig -- src/auth.ts

# Open blame view for a file directly
tig blame src/auth.ts

# Open status view for staging
tig status

# Browse the reflog
tig reflog

# Filter log by author
tig --author="Alice"

Use Cases

• Exploring a new repository's history to understand its development timeline
• Investigating when and where a bug was introduced using the blame view
• Browsing file contents at any historical commit via the tree view
• Reviewing commit diffs on a remote server without a GUI
• Finding a specific change by searching the commit log
• Getting a quick visual overview of branch state in the refs view

Pros and Cons