Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 31, 2026

Magit

Magit is a Git version control interface for GNU Emacs. It is written in Emacs Lisp and distributed through the MELPA package repository, where it is the most-downloaded non-library package, with over 4.3 million downloads as of September 2024.

Last revised
May 31, 2026
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≈ 3 min
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Source
Wikipedia ↗
Magit
Original authorMarius Vollmer
DevelopersJonas Bernoulli, Kyle Meyer, and Noam Postavsky
Stable release
4.5.01 Edit this on Wikidata / 3 January 2026 (3 January 2026)
Written inEmacs Lisp
Type
  • Git client
  • Text editor plugin
LicenseGPL-3.0-or-later
Websitemagit.vc
Repositorygithub.com/magit/magit

Magit (/ˈmædʒɪt/ MA-jit or /ˈmʌɡɪt/ MUH-git2) is a Git version control interface for GNU Emacs.3 It is written in Emacs Lisp and distributed through the MELPA package repository,4 where it is the most-downloaded non-library package, with over 4.3 million downloads as of September 2024.5

Like many graphical user interfaces, Magit provides a visual interface to represent version control actions; however, it uses a keyboard-centric model, and also functions as a text-based user interface.a The issue of key-memorization is mitigated through use of a popup menu which displays the actions available to the user6 — serving as a mnemonic aid.7

History

Magit was created by Marius Vollmer in 2008,8 with Jonas Bernoulli assuming the role of maintainer in 2013.9 Since its release, Magit has seen a high degree of community involvement, with 350 individuals10 having contributed code to this free software project as of September 2020.

In 2018 Magit underwent a Kickstarter funding campaign11 which aimed to fund the maintainer for a year of work. The fundraising was successful and resulted in the project being the 27th most funded software project on Kickstarter.12 Since the Kickstarter funded period expired donations are encouraged to support the authors development via direct payments, GitHub's sponsorship program and various other crowdfunding services.13

Functionality

A Magit buffer displaying the Emacs git repository's log source ↗

Magit aims to encapsulate the entire functionality of Git,14 and has interfaces for workflows such as:15

  • Cloning a repository, and fetching/pulling from it
  • Staging, unstaging, and discarding changes in the worktree
  • Creating commits and pushing them to a remote
  • Creating branches, and either merging or rebasing onto them
    • Magit makes use of Emacs' Ediff to provide 3-way-merge functionality
  • Browsing and bisecting the commit history
  • Creating and applying patches
  • Adding notes and tags to commits

Forges

Magit's Forge provides integration with a number of forges,16 namely GitHub and GitLab.17

Partial support is also listed for: Gitea, Gogs, Bitbucket, Gitweb, Cgit, StGit and SourceHut.

Forge currently allows for18

  • Fetching topics and notifications
  • Listing topics, issues, pull-requests, notifications, and repositories
  • Creating issues, pull-requests (PRs), PR from an issue, PR reviews, and forks

Reception

Magit is favourably covered in a number of blog posts and tutorials and a talk delivered by former Emacs' maintainer John Wiegley.192021 It is considered by some to be a "killer app" for Emacs.22

Magit is included by default in the Emacs configuration frameworks Spacemacs and Doom Emacs.2324

There has been interest in including Magit as a built-in feature package in Emacs, but there are issues with obtaining FSF copyright assignment from all contributors to the project.25

Notes

Notes

  1. In part this is a consequence of being designed for GNU Emacs, which itself can operate as a TUI.
References

References

  1. "[NonGNU ELPA] Magit version 4.5.0". 3 January 2026. Retrieved 3 January 2026.
  2. "How to pronounce Magit? (Magit User Manual)". magit.vc. Retrieved 2024-09-15.
  3. Corbet, Jonathan (July 12, 2017). "Emacs and Magit". LWN.net.
  4. "magit". Milkypostman's Emacs Lisp Package Archive. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
  5. "Current List of Packages". Milkypostman's Emacs Lisp Package Archive. Retrieved 2024-09-15.
  6. "Transient commands". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  7. Bernoulli, Jonas (2017-09-01). "Magit, the magical Git interface". EmacsAir.
  8. "magit/magit.el". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  9. "Magit 1.4.0 Release Notes". GitHub. 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
  10. "GitStats - magit". magit.vc. Retrieved 2022-03-08.
  11. "It's Magit! The magical Git client". Kickstarter. 2 October 2018.
  12. "Discover » Technology / Software » Most Funded — Kickstarter". Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  13. "Please help making it better".
  14. Bernoulli, Jonas. "It's Magit! A Git Porcelain inside Emacs". magit.vc. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
  15. "Top (Magit User Manual)". magit.vc.
  16. Heartman, Thomas (16 March 2020). "Improve your workflow with Forge".
  17. "Forge User and Developer Manual". magit.vc.
  18. "Usage (Forge User and Developer Manual)". magit.vc.
  19. Patil, Sachin. "How to use Magit to manage Git projects". opensource.com.
  20. Bachmann, Gunther. "Magit – A textual git interface". itemis.
  21. Wiegley, John (January 2019). "It's Magit!". YouTube.
  22. Corbet, Jonathan (2017-07-12). "Emacs and Magit". LWN.net. Retrieved 2026-01-12.
  23. "Spacemacs - source control layer". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  24. "Doom Emacs - default modules file". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  25. Stallman, Richard (5 July 2017). "Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit". emacs-devel (Mailing list). Retrieved 2020-09-19.
External links