Two is so often better than one. Terminator 2, Led Zeppelin II, Aliens, Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior), Lawnmower Man 2, Troll 2, Fuller House, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Halo 2, The New Testament (spoiler alert: everyone dies). The list goes on. But that list now includes GitKraken! We’re really, really excited to announce version 2.0, a release so full of improvements that it deserves it’s own number.

So, what’s new? Well, the first thing you might notice is a sleeker look. Both the light and dark themes have undergone some subtle-yet-significant changes. Not only do they look better, they’re visually more consistent and easier on the eye.

However, this version is much more than a splash of paint. We didn’t just let down its hair, take off its glasses and watch it sassily turn down eating lunch with the sorority girls. Nuh-uh.

Performance

With this major release of GitKraken, the focus was on significant performance overhauls. You probably noticed that we didn’t keep to our usual two-week release cycle this time around. That’s because our keyboard mechanics had GitKraken in bits all over the garage floor, carefully attending to every fine detail to get things tuned, and this took time to get it right. There was stress. There were tears. There were losses, including but not exclusive to sleep, hair and blood.

There was, in reality, rigorous QA testing over a long period of time, and no one was willing to release this version to the public until every GitKraken dev agreed that it hit the aggressive performance targets we had set.

For a full breakdown of v2.0’s features and improvements, you can check out our release notes, but here are the main highlights.

Commits are significantly faster. Here’s a comparison between version 1.9.3 and 2.0:

1.9.3 (left) and 2.0 (right) commit comparison

Opening a repo takes much less time. Don’t take our word for it, check out this comparison:

1.9.3 (left) and 2.0 (right) open repo comparison

Keyboard to scroll: in previous versions, GitKraken would take a while to catch up with keyboard input when scrolling. Try it now; it’s a silky smooth experience. But we would say that, wouldn’t we? That’s why this comparison proves our point:

1.9.3 (left) and 2.0 (right) keyboard scroll comparison

Staged files no longer act like they have stage fright. They’re now snappy as can be. Sounds too good to be true? Here’s another side-by-side:

1.9.3 (left) and 2.0 (right) file staging comparison

Staging hunks and lines: Who wants to wait for your hunks to get onstage? V2.0 gets those hunks in line drastically faster than before. Does that sound like an ‘alternative fact’? Here’s what you need to prove it’s an actual fact:

1.9.3 (left) and 2.0 (right) lines and hunks staging comparison

Even with all these performance enhancements, we’ve still managed to address some of the most popular feature requests made by our users.

New Features

.gitignore Finally! You can use the staging area to add files or folders to your .gitignore file. Use the contextual menu, and get your repo to be as ignorant as it needs to be.

Need fast access to your repo in the CLI? Now you can go to File > Open Terminal, and GitKraken will open your preferred CLI app and cd right to your repo directory. The first time you use this feature, you’ll be prompted to select your app of choice. After that, GitKraken will use that as the default. Or, you can go to Preferences > General > Default Terminal and change your default whenever you like.

Now, launch GitKraken and marvel at Keif the Kraken in full joy mode. Why is Keif so happy? Keif is so happy because of you. You.

Opening a repo also has a new loading graphic. The old one was a bit boring, wasn’t it? Also, it rotated just a little bit off-center. It was a bit like George Clooney as Batman: something was just off about it. Well, check out sleek Keif! This is a cool-but-serious side to Keif, showing you that this is one Kraken who means business and will open that repo at least 2x faster than before.

So there you have it! New year, new GitKraken; less time waiting for things to happen.