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Lazygit
MITLazygit is an open-source terminal Git client alternative to Sublime Merge with keyboard staging, interactive rebasing, and remote SSH workflows.
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Overview
Sublime Merge runs as a standalone desktop application requiring dedicated window switching and mouse interactions. Lazygit brings visual staging, interactive commit history management, and branch navigation directly into the developer's active terminal session. For engineers working across remote SSH instances, tmux workspaces, and command-line toolchains, this eliminates the friction of juggling external windows during development.
Why Lazygit instead of Sublime Merge
Lazygit covers the core capabilities of Sublime Merge—hunk staging, line-level selection, and interactive rebasing—while running directly in shell pipelines. Where Sublime Merge requires a desktop display server and isolates Git into a separate GUI window, Lazygit operates inside tmux, editor terminals in Neovim or VS Code, and remote SSH sessions. Developers stage changes, review diffs, and inspect branches without breaking keyboard focus or forwarding display windows across network connections.
This integration extends across the terminal toolchain. Lazygit pairs with pagers like delta for diff highlighting, links with the GitHub CLI to display pull request states alongside branches, and accepts custom YAML keybindings to run repository scripts. Sublime Merge holds an edge in graphical three-way merge conflict resolution, but costs $99 or more per seat under a proprietary license. Lazygit delivers a keyboard-driven alternative that keeps version control alongside the rest of your terminal tools.
What it does well
- Line and hunk staging: stages individual lines or visual text blocks with single keystrokes instead of manual patch editing.
- Interactive rebasing: provides keyboard shortcuts to reorder, squash, fixup, edit, or drop commits, backed by reflog undo and redo.
- Remote server support: runs natively in cloud instances and containers over SSH without requiring desktop display forwarding.
- Terminal multiplexing: docks inside tmux panes and Neovim floating windows to keep Git management alongside active code buffers.
- Custom command bindings: maps complex project-specific Git workflows or shell scripts to bespoke keystrokes in YAML configuration.
- GitHub CLI integration: connects with the official gh tool to show pull request review statuses beside branch names.