Git for Windows

Git for Windows lets developers clone repositories, record changes, and share revisions from a Windows computer. It provides Git’s distributed version-control workflow for creating commits, comparing history, managing branches, and merging parallel work. Git Bash adds a Bash command-line environment, while Windows-specific patches adapt Git and its surrounding Unix-style utilities to the platform.

Developers use it for personal projects, team codebases, release maintenance, and workflows that connect local repositories with remote ones. Its command-line tools can authenticate to remote Git services through the included OpenSSH implementation, and Git Bash can launch editors such as Vim when a commit message requires editing.

Git for Windows is open-source Developer Tools software for Windows, published by the Git for Windows project, and the current version is 2.56.0.windows.2. This release includes the Git for Windows variant of the MSYS2 runtime, based on Cygwin 3.6.10, along with OpenSSH 10.5.P1. Compared with v2.55.0(4) from August 11, 2026, it fixes the long-standing issue that cleared Git Bash’s screen after git.exe invoked Vim. The Bash executables in the 64-bit and ARM64 distributions also no longer have invalid Authenticode signatures.

Following MSYS2’s compatibility policy, Windows 8.1 support will end after Git for Windows v2.55, making this 2.55 release line the last one for that system. The available distributions include 64-bit and ARM64 builds, giving users a choice suited to their Windows hardware architecture.