Git client Tower for Windows gets visual overhaul and improved search

Tower Dark Mode
Tower Dark Mode (Image credit: Tower)

What you need to know

  • Tower is a Git client built to streamline the workflow of developers.
  • It just received a major update to version 3.
  • Tower 3 introduces quick actions, brings a visual overhaul, and improves the search functionality of the Git client.

Tower is a popular Git client that can speed up the workflow of developers. It features several automation tools and features that allow developers to work more quickly, such as drag and drop support for many complex tasks. Tower just received a major update to version 3. The app now has a new look, support for Quick Actions on Windows, and improved search functionality.

Here's the full list of what's new and improved in Tower 3:

New

  • Quick Actions: The Quick Actions dialog is now available in Tower for Windows. This handy feature allows you to quickly find actionable items in your repository (such as branches, tags, commits and files) and invoke certain actions on them (like checking out a branch or showing a file in the history). The dialog can be opened by pressing "Alt + Shift + A". Learn more about this new feature here.
  • Dark Mode: Tower Windows users can now enjoy the gorgeous new dark theme! Dark and light mode can also be set independently from the system settings.
  • History Search: The new Tower allows you to search the commit history by commit message, author and committer name. You can also use the search feature to find specific files in commit changesets.
  • Navigation: You can now navigate the different views in Tower back and forward, just like you'd do using a web browser. The navigation state is saved, so after reopening Tower you will see the same view that you had open when the application was closed.
  • New Installer: We have replaced the old installer / updater with a more efficient option. New updates will now only take seconds to install, without having to click through multiple dialogs.

Improved

  • Performance: We have significantly improved performance across the whole app, as well as stability.
  • UI/UX: Tower 3 boasts an improved user interface and a more polished design for a better user experience.
  • Title Bar: We combined the title and menu bar in order to improve visual consistency across the Mac and Windows apps.
  • History View: Commits in the history can now be grouped by date.
  • Avatars: If no avatar image can be loaded, Tower now uses the user's initials instead of a placeholder image.
  • Avatars: Avatar images are now loaded in a higher resolution.
  • Toolbar: Tooltips are now shown for all items immediately.
  • Toolbar: Visibility of toolbar item labels can now be enabled/disabled from the preferences or the view menu.
  • Scrollbars: Scrollbars across the app have been made less obtrusive.
  • Sidebars: We increased the vertical spacing for all sidebar items and also the padding to the scrollbar.

Tower allows developers to manage GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Azure DevOps & Beanstalk accounts from one application. It can also clone large projects in the background, automate fetching and stashing, and run multiple projects side-by-side.

The Basic plan for Tower costs $69 per year, and the Pro Plan costs $99 annually. Students and teachers can use Tower for free. There is also a 30-day free trial available for Tower Pro.

Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com.