By Kelvin Yap on April 27, 2017

It’s an exciting time to be a Windows developer using SourceTree. We’ve seen steady adoption of SourceTree for Windows and today more than half our users come from Windows – impressive for a tool that used to be Mac only! Since launching the 2.0 beta in January and acting on the feedback we’ve received since, we’re excited to announce that SourceTree for Windows 2.0 is now generally available.

Alongside refreshing the UI with a new and improved design, we’ve also listened to all the feedback you’ve provided and focused on making SourceTree for Windows 2.0 the fastest version yet. And that’s not all, as we’re proud to announce support for Microsoft’s Git Virtual File System, making the process of working with unusually large repositories easier than ever before.

change you’ll see in SourceTree is the new design. We gathered a lot of feedback around the user experience so not only have we updated SourceTree with a modern look and feel, we’ve also overhauled tabs to improve your repository browsing experience, with a specific focus on finding and cloning your remote repositories. We’ve added more vibrant colors, improved workflow for common operations, and we’ve increased performance by refactoring the bookmarks sidebar. .

Blazing fast performance

Many of you have voiced your concerns about the performance of SourceTree on Windows and we heard you loud and clear. By adding a hybrid LibGit2 handler under the hood for most git operations we were able to improve performance in some cases by almost 2x. Here are the performance tests we ran comparing 2.0 to 1.10 – the results speak for themselves:

And by all means don’t take our word for it, and see for yourself just how much faster performance is in this new release!

Support for Git Virtual File System

For all the great things about Git, a common complaint is how difficult it can be to work with large repositories. Git Large File Storage (LFS) helps alleviate these issues when your repository contains large files, but doesn’t help when you have lots of files or content in your repository. To help with this Microsoft announced Git Virtual File System (GVFS) at Git Merge this year, which “virtualizes the file system beneath your repo and makes it appear as though all the files in your repo are present, but in reality only downloads a file the first time it is opened.” So for those working on large repositories that typically deal with a small section of the codebase, using GVFS means you only download what you need rather than the entire repository. This in turn results in faster performance for common operations like checkout and status and improves the experience of using Git as a whole.

, enabling you to combine a beautifully simple UI alongside a great technology that makes handling large repositories easier than ever. We’re excited to support GVFS in 2.0, and the same sentiment is shared by Microsoft:

“We’re excited that GVFS is supported in a widely used git client like SourceTree, and we love the new look and feel in 2.0.” Jeremy Epling, Principal Program Manager on Microsoft TFS & Visual Studio Team Services

Get started today

We’re proud to continue supporting all of the Windows developers out there using SourceTree, and we hope you’re as about all the great new features and improvements in SourceTree for Windows 2.0. Upgrade or download it today and tell us what you think!

Using SourceTree 1.9 or earlier?

We implemented a change in the way we roll out updates (announced We implemented a change in the way we roll out updates (announced here ) late last year, so if you’re using SourceTree for Windows 1.9 or earlier you will not see auto updates for 2.0. Please download 2.0 directly from our website instead.

Download SourceTree free