gitview

A plain git history viewer for macOS. Like gitk, without Tk.

This project is 100% vibe coded. Every line of code, test and doc was written by an AI (Claude) in a chat. A human only described what they wanted, used the app, and said what to change.

Why

gitk does one job well: it shows the history. But it runs on Tk (wish), and on a Mac that means:

• ugly, blurry fonts and a dated look
• slow on big repos
• clunky keys, scrolling and windows

Most other git tools try to be clever: staging, rebasing, dashboards. We only wanted to see the history. So gitview does what gitk does, as a native Mac app, and nothing more. It never changes your repo.

What it shows

• Commits with a branch/merge graph, branch and tag labels, author and date.
• The selected commit's hash, with a copy button.
• Changed files, with a filter. Click one to jump to it in the diff.
• The diff, colored, with long lines wrapped.
• Commit messages highlighted, using the same rules as vim/nvim's gitcommit syntax: a type(scope)!: prefix is bold, fixup!/amend! blue, and trailers like Co-Authored-By: red. Subjects in the commit list too.

The window, panel sizes, font and theme (View → Appearance: Light, Dark or System) are remembered.

Install

Built for macOS 14 or later (only tested on macOS 27). Needs the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install); full Xcode is not needed.

make install

This builds ~/.local/share/gitview/gitview.app and links ~/.local/bin/gitview to it. Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH.

Use

Run it inside a repo. It takes any git log arguments:

gitview                  # current branch
gitview --all            # all branches
gitview main..feature    # commits in feature, not in main
gitview -- src/          # only commits touching src/
gitview --author=ada

The terminal is free right away. Each run opens its own window.

Keys

Key	Action
↑ ↓	Move in the focused list
Tab / Shift+Tab	Next / previous pane: commits → diff → files
Space / Shift+Space	Scroll the diff down / up
Cmd+F or /	Find: commits in the commit list, file names in the file list, text in the diff
Enter, Cmd+G / Shift+Cmd+G	Next / previous commit match
Esc	Leave the search box
Cmd+C	Copy the commit hash (or the file path in the file list)
Cmd+R	Reload
Cmd+T	Choose a font (default: Source Code Pro 12)
Cmd+= / Cmd+- / Cmd+0	Bigger / smaller / default font

How it works

• History comes from git log, diffs from git show. Nothing else touches the repo.
• The graph is laid out as commits stream in, so big repos show up at once and load in the background.
• The gitview command asks macOS to start gitview.app. Started straight from the shell, macOS would group it with the terminal and show "App Running in Background" every time it quits.

Logs

Logs go to ~/.gitview/logs/YYYY-MM-DD.log and are kept for 14 days. Include them when reporting a problem.

Develop

make test               # unit tests
make run ARGS="--all"   # run a dev build in the terminal

A dev build (swift build) runs attached to the terminal. GITVIEW_FOREGROUND=1 does the same for the installed app. The design is in docs/superpowers/specs. make icon redraws the app icon from app/make-icon.swift.

License

MIT