Why GitHub desktop?

GitHub Desktop is a free and open-source Desktop application developed by GitHub to provide a Git GUI client to manage repositories graphically instead of command line. It provides users with an easy-to-use interface for managing and organizing repositories hosted on the GitHub platform.

What are the advantages?

There are multiple advantages of using the GitHub Desktop app on Windows or MacOS systems that can help the developers to streamline their development workflow and enhance their experience with GIT. Some of the key Advantages are:

• Better Collaboration: Collaborating with other developers on a project becomes easy using the GitHub Desktop. The pull request feature makes it simple to evaluate the changes made by others and provide feedback directly from the app. You can also view your own or your collaborator’s pull requests in the app. Hence, makes things simpler.
• Enhance Productivity: No need to open a browser or use CLI to manage repositories is another advantage. All Git-related tasks such as push, pull, merge and fetch can be done with just a click. Also, the Credentials will be saved automatically for future use. Furthermore, resolving conflicts on the GitHub desktop is a lot easier and makes Git and GitHub workflows more approachable.
• Better Version Control: Keeping track of changes made to the code using the GitHub Desktop becomes a lot easier as compared to the command line. And if necessary, with a click user can revert to the previous version of the code. This helps in reducing the risk of bugs and other issues that can lead to losing important changes.
• Central management: If you have multiple repositories on the GitHub hosting, then you can manage all of them using a single Desktop app along with the benefits of other tools.
• Open source: Being a free-to-use app that was released under an open-source license, the community support will be there.
• Syntax Highlighter: Another advantage of using GitHub Desktop is it supports syntax highlighting when viewing diffs for a variety of different languages.
• Editor & shell integrations: Software developers, obviously need an editor or shell to work on code, so they can open them right from the app.
• Keeps local repository in sync: GitHub Desktop can keep your local copy of a project in sync with the remote version by pushing and pulling commits.

Before starting, click the download button at the top of this page and extract the GitHub Desktop.exe file. After this, open the file to install GitHub desktop. After this, follow the tutorial to set up GitHub Desktop.

1

Log In

After downloading and opening the .exe file, click on the “Sign in to Github.com” button or Enterprise as per your plan.

2

Enter your GitHub.com Account username and password to log in

3

Review the access the app is going to take and click on the Authorize Desktop button.

4

Check the box, when a pop-up appears to run GitHub-Desktop.exe and click on the Open button.

5

Click on the Finish button and Start cloning your available repositories.