Keep your apps up to date straight from their GitHub releases. Windows, macOS and Linux.
A ton of great software ships on GitHub — and nothing keeps it updated. git-updater is a self-hosted Ninite replacement: you pick the apps, it checks their latest releases and updates them, portable apps and installed programs alike. No accounts, no background services, no store — just your list and GitHub.
Grab the build for your machine from Releases.
| Download | Run it | |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | git-updater-<v>-<arch>.zip (x64, arm64) |
unzip anywhere, run git-updater.exe |
| macOS | git-updater-<v>-mac-arm64.dmg (Apple Silicon) |
open it, drag to Applications |
| Linux | git-updater-<v>-linux-<arch>.tar.gz (x64, arm64) |
extract anywhere, run git-updater |
No setup, no admin rights, no background service, and closing the window exits everything. Windows builds are Authenticode-signed (Thomas Schmitz, via Azure Trusted Signing); macOS builds are Developer ID signed and notarized.
On macOS, only notarized apps will run — see below.
An AppImage is published too. It needs libfuse2, which recent Ubuntu releases no longer
install by default, so on many current systems it will not start unless that is present.
The tarball has no such requirement, which is why it is the recommended Linux download.
- Tracks any app that ships GitHub releases. Paste a releases URL (or
owner/repo), say whether you want it portable or installed, done. It figures out the right download for your machine by itself — platform, architecture, archive vs installer, even matching the format an app is already installed in (MSI vs EXE on Windows, deb vs rpm on Linux) so you never end up with duplicates. - Shows what you actually have. Current comes from the system itself — the uninstall registry on Windows, the app bundle's own version on macOS, dpkg/rpm/flatpak/snap on Linux, or the portable folder — not from what some tool remembers doing. Next to it: the latest available version and a live status.
- Updates on your terms. Per-app Check/Update buttons, or Check all / Update all batches with live progress (Downloading 42% → Verifying → Installing). Each row has an overflow menu: Edit, Force reinstall, Close app & update, View release, Open folder, Stop tracking.
- Scan this PC (Windows and macOS). Finds programs you already have that git-updater recognizes — a curated catalog of 120+ GitHub-released apps (browsers, media, dev tools, AI tools, runtimes), filtered to the ones that exist on your platform — and adds the ones you pick. Not offered on Linux, where your package manager already owns most of what it would find and accepting a suggestion would give you a second copy outside it. Browsing the whole catalog and cherry-picking works everywhere.
- Safe by default. Every download is checksum-verified. Portable updates are transactional — a failed or interrupted update restores the previous version completely, and your settings inside the app folder survive. Installers that need admin rights fall back to their own window with a normal UAC prompt.
- Quiet by design. Nothing runs at startup, nothing phones home, no background service. Open it, update, close it — on macOS too, where it deliberately does not linger in the dock. It even tells you when git-updater itself has a new release.
Only notarized apps will run. git-updater will install any app you point it at, but on Apple Silicon macOS refuses to LAUNCH anything that is not notarized — including an app signed with a valid Developer ID that was simply never notarized, which it treats exactly as it treats an unsigned one. git-updater cannot change that, and does not try to.
Downloads keep their quarantine flag. macOS attaches it, Apple's own copy tool carries it across unchanged, and git-updater does not strip it. One consequence worth knowing: an app you had previously approved by hand is replaced whole by an update, and the new copy arrives carrying the download's own quarantine — so your earlier approval does not carry over with it.
An update that would damage an app is rolled back. A macOS application is sealed, and a single stray file inside it stops macOS accepting it. If an update leaves a bundle whose signature no longer verifies, git-updater puts the previous version back rather than leaving you with the damaged one.
git-updater updates itself in place on Windows and Linux, where the new version is installed in its own folder and the launcher switches to it on next start. On macOS it tells you a new version exists and sends you to the release page instead: an app bundle is the unit macOS launches, so there is nowhere to put a launcher that is not itself inside the thing being replaced.
- Open Settings (top right) and pick your portable apps folder (
C:\PortableApps,~/Applications,~/Apps— wherever you like). - Add app → paste a GitHub releases URL → choose Portable or Installer.
- Check all, then Update all. That's it.
Prefer beta builds for a specific app? Tick include beta (pre-release) versions when adding it.
git-updater is also available as a drop-in app for open-quake (Settings → Drop-In Apps → Browse). It shares the same app list and state with the desktop version — add apps here, update them from the panel, or vice versa.
npm install && npm start # run from source
npm test # engine tests
npm run dist # build the portable zips (signed when the machine has the signing setup)npm run dist:mac and npm run dist:linux build the other two (each must run on that OS).
There's also a headless CLI (node bin/watch.js check|update) for scripting. Config lives in
git-updater's own folder — %APPDATA%\git-updater\ on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/git-updater/ on macOS, ~/.config/git-updater/ on Linux. Per-app overrides (asset
patterns, custom install dirs, installer switches), architecture notes, and design details
are in docs/INTERNALS.md.