GitKraken Desktop

Pros: GitKraken is still one of the most pleasant ways to work with Git day-to-day. The UI is clean, modern, and genuinely helps you understand what’s happening in a repo at a glance. The commit graph is readable even on busy projects, and common operations like branching, rebasing, cherry-picking, and resolving conflicts feel safer thanks to clear visual cues and good diff tools. Integrations with GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket are smooth, and linking commits to issues or PRs is effortless. Workspaces and tabbed repos make juggling multiple projects easy. Overall, it’s fast, stable, and lowers the cognitive load of Git without hiding the power you need.

Cons: The biggest disappointment is the lack of a solid WSL2 workflow. If your repos live inside WSL2 (which is now the default setup for tons of Windows developers), GitKraken still can’t handle them cleanly without clunky workarounds or slow cross-filesystem access. What makes this sting more is that proper WSL2 support has been the #1 requested feature on GitKraken’s own user suggestions page for a long time, yet it remains unresolved. For a paid product, that gap feels increasingly out of step with real-world Windows dev.

Overall: GitKraken is a fantastic Git client—right up until you’re a Windows developer using WSL2. On macOS, Linux, or native-Windows repos, it’s a joy: it makes complex Git history approachable, reduces mistakes, and speeds up routine tasks in a way the CLI rarely matches. But the modern Windows development story is WSL2-first, and GitKraken still treats that setup as second-class. When the community’s most-requested feature is “good WSL2 support” and it’s still missing, it undermines trust in the roadmap. I’d recommend GitKraken enthusiastically to non-WSL2 users, but for WSL2-heavy teams, it’s hard to justify until GitKraken closes this very visible, very frustrating gap.

Pros: The basic convenience of a Git UI tool. Cool interface. Cute octopus. New octopus animation on the startup screen every few months.

Cons: - Critical bugs that can ruin your whole day of work, if not more (taking into account that you have certain expectations/deadlines)
- Awful pricing policy, taking into account the critical bugs.

Overall: I will be extra careful with it from now on, and I don't recommend using it.

I can't express how much I am frustrated being forced to do all of the hard work once again since this thing annihilated all of the changes I've done through the hard day of work.

Pros: Works well either standalone or as a companion to the git command line. Graphical layout reinforces the core concepts of Git.

Cons: Pricing model can be frustrating sometimes-- local-only repos are allowed, but private GitHub or GitLab ones are not.

Overall: Useful tool to have for working on both personal and collaborative projects. Can help with diagnosing issues with a Git repo--the graphical view is much more intuitive than the Git CLI!