An open-source alternative to commercial Git clients, built for teams working with GitLab and GitHub: no proprietary cloud, no vendor account, no telemetry and no AI.
I'm Johann, maker of BeeBranch: an open-source, local-first Git client for the desktop.
I built it because I work with self-hosted GitLab every day, and every GUI Git client I tried asked for something first — a vendor account, a cloud workspace, telemetry, or an AI feature I never wanted. BeeBranch asks for none of it. Your repositories stay the only source of truth, and the app has no idea who you are.
What's inside:
• A complete local workflow: status, staging by file / hunk / line, commit and amend, stash, tags, worktrees, submodules, patches. • An interactive history with a virtualized canvas graph — 200k commits stay smooth. Benchmarks are versioned in the repo, not vibes. • Merge and rebase with real intermediate states, explicit undo/redo built only on operations Git can reverse, and a crash-recovery journal. • Native GitLab (merge requests, pipelines, CI badges) and GitHub (pull requests, reviews, checks, Actions logs), including self-hosted GitLab and GitHub Enterprise. Auth is a PAT in the OS keychain, or reuse your existing git credentials — the secret is never copied into the app. • Zero telemetry. Zero AI. The network is only used for Git, the GitLab/GitHub APIs, and minisign-verified updates.
This is the 1.0.0 release, so I'll be honest: it's the first public version. The feedback I care about most — does the "no account, no cloud, self-hosted GitLab first" positioning actually match how your team works, or is there one workflow you'd need before replacing your current client?
I'll be in the comments all day. Thanks for trying it.
No telemetry and no vendor account is a rare pitch for a Git client, most of them quietly assume you'll sign in somewhere. The thing I'd actually test on day one with self-hosted GitLab is a custom CA, a lot of enterprise instances sit behind TLS interception or an internal proxy. Does BeeBranch read the OS trust store for that, or do you need to feed it a cert yourself?
The explicit undo/redo is the detail that would make me trust this with a messy rebase — building it only on operations Git can actually reverse, plus a crash-recovery journal, is a much more honest model than a generic undo button. The 200k-commit virtualized graph is the other real test. When a rebase stops mid-way, does the journal surface that exact intermediate state on relaunch, or do you have to go looking for it?
About BeeBranch on Product Hunt
“The local-first desktop Git client”
BeeBranch launched on Product Hunt on November 1st, 2026 and earned 91 upvotes and 5 comments, placing #11 on the daily leaderboard. An open-source alternative to commercial Git clients, built for teams working with GitLab and GitHub: no proprietary cloud, no vendor account, no telemetry and no AI.
BeeBranch was featured in Productivity (664.6k followers), Open Source (69k followers), GitHub (41.5k followers) and Tech (635.9k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 397.9k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted BeeBranch?
BeeBranch was hunted by Johann. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how BeeBranch stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Johann
Hey Product Hunt 👋
I'm Johann, maker of BeeBranch: an open-source, local-first Git client for the desktop.
I built it because I work with self-hosted GitLab every day, and every GUI Git client I tried asked for something first — a vendor account, a cloud workspace,
telemetry, or an AI feature I never wanted. BeeBranch asks for none of it. Your repositories stay the only source of truth, and the app has no idea who you are.
What's inside:
• A complete local workflow: status, staging by file / hunk / line, commit and amend, stash, tags, worktrees, submodules, patches.
• An interactive history with a virtualized canvas graph — 200k commits stay smooth. Benchmarks are versioned in the repo, not vibes.
• Merge and rebase with real intermediate states, explicit undo/redo built only on operations Git can reverse, and a crash-recovery journal.
• Native GitLab (merge requests, pipelines, CI badges) and GitHub (pull requests, reviews, checks, Actions logs), including self-hosted GitLab and GitHub Enterprise.
Auth is a PAT in the OS keychain, or reuse your existing git credentials — the secret is never copied into the app.
• Zero telemetry. Zero AI. The network is only used for Git, the GitLab/GitHub APIs, and minisign-verified updates.
macOS (Apple Silicon), Windows and Linux. Requires Git ≥ 2.34. AGPL-3.0, free, source included:
https://github.com/Methamorphe/beebranch
This is the 1.0.0 release, so I'll be honest: it's the first public version. The feedback I care about most — does the "no account, no cloud, self-hosted GitLab first"
positioning actually match how your team works, or is there one workflow you'd need before replacing your current client?
I'll be in the comments all day. Thanks for trying it.