Installation

The fastest install on Linux and macOS, downloads the latest prebuilt binary from GitHub Releases and drops it into ~/.local/bin.

curl -fsSL https://gitoui.nayji7.dev/install.sh | sh

The installer:

Picks the correct binary for your (os, arch) from the latest GitHub Release.
Verifies the tarball checksum.
Installs to $HOME/.local/bin/gitoui by default.
Checks that the install directory is on your PATH; if it isn’t, prints the export PATH=... line to add to your shell rc file (it doesn’t edit the file itself).

Tweaks

Variable / flag	Effect
`INSTALL_DIR=...`	Override the install directory.
`GITOUI_VERSION=vX.Y`	Pin to a specific tag instead of `latest`.
`NO_COLOR=1`	Disable ANSI colors in the installer output.
`--ascii` (or `GITOUI_ASCII=1`)	Force ASCII banner when piping the output.

On macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux, install the prebuilt binary from the gitoui tap:

brew install nayji7/tap/gitoui

Homebrew owns the binary, so updates go through Homebrew too (see Updating).

If you have a Rust toolchain, cargo install pulls the latest release straight from crates.io:

cargo install gitoui

To track the bleeding edge instead, install from git HEAD:

cargo install --git https://github.com/NayJi7/gitoui

git clone https://github.com/NayJi7/gitoui
cd gitoui
cargo build --release
install -m 0755 target/release/gitoui ~/.local/bin/

The release binary is ~16 MB. A debug build is ~250 MB and slower at startup, only use it for development.

Verify

Check the binary is on your PATH:
Terminal window
```
gitoui --version
```
cd into any git repo:
Terminal window
```
cd ~/my/repo
```
Launch:
Terminal window
```
gitoui
```
If your terminal supports a graph image protocol (Ghostty / Kitty / iTerm2 / Sixel) you should see the commit graph painted inline. Otherwise it falls back to Unicode glyphs.

First-launch splash, G logomark, gitoui wordmark, and the commit graph

Recommended font

For the best experience, use a Nerd Font - a monospace font patched with extra glyphs for developer icons. Without one, GitHub icons in PR/Issues headers render as blank boxes.

Good choices:

JetBrains Mono Nerd Font - excellent box-drawing rendering, ligatures, very readable
FiraCode Nerd Font - ligatures, good Unicode coverage
Hack Nerd Font - clean and sober, good at small sizes
CascadiaCode Nerd Font - Microsoft’s monospace, good emoji support
MesloLGS Nerd Font - classic, recommended by Powerlevel10k

Any Nerd Font variant works. Install one, set it as your terminal’s font, and all UI glyphs (graph nodes, spinners, GitHub icons) will render correctly.

Updating

gitoui checks crates.io for a newer release once a day at startup. When one is available, you’ll see a prompt:

y, runs the update right away (cargo install --force if you installed via cargo, otherwise re-runs install.sh) and re-launches the new binary.
n, skips this time. The prompt comes back tomorrow.
N, disables the automatic check entirely. Writes [core.option] check_updates = false to your config file so future launches stay silent. To revert, just remove that line from ~/.config/gitoui/config.toml and the check kicks back in on the next launch.

Installed with Homebrew? gitoui never prompts at startup, and gitoui --update only tells you a new version exists. Update with Homebrew instead:

brew upgrade gitoui

The script and cargo install are both idempotent, you can also trigger an update manually at any time:

gitoui --update            # prompt now, regardless of cache / opt-out
curl -fsSL https://gitoui.nayji7.dev/install.sh | sh
cargo install gitoui --force --locked

gitoui --no-update-check skips the daily check for a single launch without touching your config.

Uninstalling

Remove the binary, then the directories gitoui writes to:

rm ~/.local/bin/gitoui              # binary (curl install)
rm -rf ~/.config/gitoui             # config, custom themes, recent repos (+ GitHub token on Linux)
rm -rf ~/.cache/gitoui              # commit cache, update-check state (+ avatars on Linux)

On macOS, two more locations:

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/gitoui   # GitHub token
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/gitoui                 # avatars

Installed with Homebrew? Remove the binary with brew uninstall gitoui instead of the first rm. Installed with cargo? Use cargo uninstall gitoui. Then delete the directories the same way.