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Claude edited this page Jul 12, 2026 · 37 revisions

Desktop Material

Desktop Material is an independent Material Design 3 (M3 Expressive) remake of GitHub Desktop. It is a fork of desktop/desktop (MIT) with the entire application shell rebuilt around Material Design 3 — animated light/dark theming, dynamic type and color tokens, and a browser-like, tabbed workspace — while keeping GitHub Desktop's complete Git workflow intact underneath.

On top of that shell, Desktop Material has shipped a first wave of power-user features: multi-account sign-in (including several identities per host), per-account repository tabs with rich title styling, a Git-backed per-account settings history, and a non-modal dialog framework. A large further expansion — automation, a GitHub Actions panel, a notification centre, regex-powered search, and multi-clone — is planned and tracked in the project plan.

Status: Desktop Material is in active development. Preview builds are published from the project's GitHub Releases. Feature-parity references come from desktop-plus (MIT).

Desktop Material Changes view with the MD3 shell

Contents

Page What it covers
User Guide Task-oriented walkthrough — sign-in, repository tabs, the MD3 shell, Settings history, and non-modal dialogs (shipped), plus a preview of the planned features.
Automation Planned. Scheduled auto commit & push, auto pull, and merge-all — with the safety rules that will gate each one.
Regex Guide Planned. How the search bars will work: filter chips, regex mode, and the regex builder.
Developer Guide Architecture for contributors — Electron main/renderer, the store/dispatcher state flow, dugite, per-account profile repos, and the SCSS token system.
Agent API Planned. The built-in MCP server and local HTTP/CLI fallback for AI-agent control.

The Automation, Regex Guide, and Agent API pages describe roadmap features that are not yet implemented. They are kept as living design docs; the User Guide is the accurate guide to what ships today.

Shipped today

  • Material Design 3 Expressive shell with animated light/dark theming and M3 color tokens: an app bar with an inline pill menu, a left icon navigation rail (Changes with a badge, History, Branches, Settings, account avatar), a floating pill toolbar with repository and branch chips and a sync pill, and floating radius-24 workspace cards with tri-state checkboxes, tonal status chips, token-based diff colors, and an inverse-surface undo banner.
  • Browser-like repository tabs — per-account and bound to repos, with inline rename and per-tab title styling (bold/italic/underline, size, color, font family, alignment).
  • Multi-account — multiple identities per host; each account carries its own tabs, repos, and settings.
  • Per-account settings in a local git repo — every settings or tabs change auto-commits. Open Edit → Settings History… (Ctrl+Alt+Z) for a non-modal timeline with lazy diffs, undo, redo, and restore; each history action appends an audit commit.

Live Settings history side sheet

  • Non-modal dialogs that float without blocking the app, drag by their headers, cascade, and come to front on focus. Preferences is an MD3 940×660 dialog with a left rail, an Active chip, and a pill footer; the repository and branch pickers are MD3 side sheets.

On the roadmap (not yet implemented)

  • Notification centre — a bell and side panel backed by its own local git repo; unread badge, mark read/unread, delete.
  • Regex search everywhere — filter chips, a regex-mode toggle, and a full regex builder on every search bar.
  • Multi-clone — select many repositories with checkboxes, filter by org chips, clone in parallel or one-by-one, and export/import repo lists (URLs only).
  • Automation — one-click commit & push (Copilot writes the message), scheduled auto commit & push and auto pull, and merge-all branches/worktrees with Copilot conflict resolution.
  • GitHub Actions panel — workflow runs, status/branch/event filters, re-run / re-run-failed, job steps, an in-app log viewer, and a workflow_dispatch dialog.
  • Built-in MCP server (plus a local HTTP/CLI fallback) for AI-agent control.
  • Gitignore manager with template auto-suggest, and one-click Build & Run.
  • GitHub organization support and dynamic UI scaling (50–200% slider plus auto-fit).
  • Self-hosted GitLab sign-in (endpoint + personal access token) and GitLab/Bitbucket integration.
  • Desktop-plus parity — commit search, commit graph, multiple stashes, repo pinning/grouping, pull-all, and more.

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