GitHub on the go?

#github #code #beginners #discuss

Do you use a mobile app for Github? I'm trying to implement some code-reading time, and having access from my phone sounds like a good plan.
Thoughts?
-Ryan

Top comments (15)

Sergey Kislyakov • Aug 17 '17

I use GitPoint on my phone. I like to stay up-to-date with the projects I'm watching (issues/PRs/etc).

Ben Halpern • Aug 17 '17

Are you satisfied with it in general?

Sergey Kislyakov • Aug 17 '17

It's a bit unresponsive/slow on the first load but in general I like it. I haven't seen a better client anyway.

Ben Halpern • Aug 17 '17

I'm surprised GitHub hasn't come out with an app. It's not exactly resource-limited company, and if third parties can pull something half-decent with the public API, GitHub themselves should be able to something too.

Sergey Kislyakov • Aug 17 '17

Well, to be fair If I was Github, I wouldn't spend my resources on the mobile app. You can view issues and comment on them in your browser. Other tasks such as PR review or file editing are way too complicated to do them using a phone imo. It's good to see 3rd-party clients for Github and if they (Github) were interested in creating a mobile app (so spending resources on the app would worth it), they would create it already.

If you have an idea of a mobile Github workflow, I'd want to hear about it. I rarely comment on issues from my phone, mostly just view them. Reviewing commits is PITA because the display is not that big (5' vs 22'). So I could use a web browser but native apps rulez!

Ben Halpern • Aug 17 '17

Yeah, I'm backseat driving and I'm sure they know what they're doing. I would think a good mobile workflow would be one that emphasizes the discussion portion with issues, but also has a custom interface for PR review. I'm not convinced a lot of that can't be done on the phone, it would just take some innovation, and it would help if they got something out and then iterated. Eventually I bet it could work with some intuitive gestures, etc.

It would be interesting to see if, say, GitLab wanted to challenge GitHub in this arena and get a headstart. Of course, it's harder for the smaller company to go multi-platform. It's certainly why our tiny team hasn't worked on a native app even though a lot of our traffic is mobile.

Christian Baer • Aug 18 '17

GitHub did have a mobile app. They decided to discontinue the development in favour for a mobile website.

Ben Halpern • Aug 18 '17

Despite my blowhardedness, this is probably the right choice. The mobile web is getting better and better. Has GitHub ever talked publicly about their reasoning for these choices?

Houssein Djirdeh • Sep 19 '17

As much as I really push for not needing a native solution for apps that can work well on the mobile browser, I've always felt the need to rely on a third party native GitHub client. Couldn't find any that were completely free and had everything that I needed, so I built GitPoint :)

This article was really the only mention I've heard about their mobile website but haven't heard anything about their reasoning either. Definitely curious as well.

David Israwi • Aug 17 '17

I've also used GitPoint.

The app is not that old, it's in continuous open-source development. Here's the repo if you guys want to check it out github.com/gitpoint/git-point

Houssein Djirdeh • Sep 19 '17

Author of GitPoint here <3. Every available mobile client that I tried to use seemed too simple, required payment or really didn't have the best UI. That plus the fact I was itching to build something with React Native gave me enough reason to build the app :)

The project is still far from perfect but we have an active community and are looking forward to smoothing things out and adding a number of features in the next few releases. Please don't hesitate to let us know if we can improve in anyway if you give it a shot.