Open or clone a repository
On first launch GitLane asks for a repository. Point it at any folder inside a git worktree — it discovers the repository root from a subdirectory, so you don’t have to find the exact top level.
Each open repository gets its own tab, and your tabs are restored the next time you launch.
Read the graph
The center pane is the commit tree. Every line of history gets its own lane and colour. Branches, remotes, tags, stashes, and your uncommitted work all live in the same view — stashes sit at the point in history where you made them, and uncommitted changes float on top as a WIP row.
Drag one branch onto another
This is the thing to try first. Grab a branch pill in the graph and drop it on another one. GitLane offers exactly the operations that make sense for how those two branches actually relate — fast-forward, merge, rebase, or reset. No flags to remember.
Jump anywhere
Press Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + F to open the branch navigator: branches, remotes, worktrees, tags, and stashes in one searchable, pinnable palette. Click anything to move the graph to it.
Stage and commit
Edit a file and it appears in the working-changes panel. Stage whole files, folders, individual hunks — or a single line. The commit composer shows you exactly who you’re committing as and where the commit will land.
Set your commit identity
Before your first commit, it’s worth checking who GitLane will commit as. Open Settings → Identities.
GitLane keeps two things deliberately separate:
- Accounts authenticate. They handle clone, fetch, pull, push, and pull-request API calls.
- Identities author. An identity card is a name, an email, and an optional GPG/SSH signing key, applied to a repository’s local git config.
The practical payoff: you can’t accidentally commit to a client repository with your personal email, or push an unverified signature, because the identity is pinned per repository rather than inherited from whichever account you happen to be signed in as.
If you do nothing, GitLane commits as “this computer” — your global git config, exactly as a terminal would.
More on accounts and identities →
Connect a forge (optional)
To review pull requests in-app, sign in to your forge. GitHub goes through
the gh CLI (including multiple accounts and GitHub Enterprise). GitLab
works through glab or a personal access token; Bitbucket through an
Atlassian API token. Tokens are added in Settings → Accounts and stored in
your OS keychain.