Git identity & signing

The Git User pane manages who your commits say you are — globally and, when a repository is selected, per repo — and whether they’re signed. The Git Config pane sits beside it for the raw keys the curated UI doesn’t cover, and the General pane holds your external-editor choice.

Open Settings with ⌘, / Ctrl+,. All three panes live in one window: General under the GENERAL group, Git User and Git Config under SOURCE CONTROL. Git User and General save through the footer Save button (there is no in-pane save); pressing Escape closes the window without saving.

Global identity

The Git User pane’s Global identity section holds two fields, Name and Email, backed by git’s global user.name and user.email. These are what every commit records as its author unless a repository overrides them.

Per-repository override

When a repository is selected in Birch, the pane grows a Repository override (optional) section. Its Name and Email fields write the repository-local user.name / user.email; the watermark says it plainly — Leave empty to use global. Use this for the classic split: personal identity globally, work identity in work repos.

Commit signing

The Global signing section (and, with a repository selected, a matching Repository signing override) controls whether commits are signed:

Control	What it sets
Sign commits (commit.gpgsign) checkbox	git’s commit.gpgsign
Key field	user.signingkey — a key id, or a path for SSH keys
Format selector	The signing format: openpgp (GPG, the default) or ssh

Once signing is configured, signed commits show a signature glyph in the History tab’s list mode.

The Git Config editor

The Git Config pane is the escape hatch for everything else. A segmented Global / This repository toggle at the top picks the scope (the repository scope appears only when a repository is selected); everything below applies to the chosen scope.

• Common settings — curated controls for three keys: pull.rebase (dropdown), core.autocrlf (dropdown), and credential.helper (free text, e.g. osxkeychain on macOS or manager on Windows). The Save common settings button writes all three; the window’s footer Save does the same for this pane.
• Add / set a key — a free-form pair of fields (section.key, e.g. alias.co, plus a value) with a Set button. Applies immediately.
• All entries — every key in the current scope, listed with an editable value and per-row Set / Unset buttons. Also applies immediately, so this doubles as a quick way to inspect what a scope actually contains.

External editor

The General pane chooses how Birch opens files and folders in your editor:

• Visual Studio Code
• Sublime Text
• Custom command — any command line, e.g. nvim {path} or /usr/local/bin/myeditor. The path being opened is appended as the last argument, or substituted for a {path} placeholder if you include one. Quote arguments that contain spaces.

Identity and the dashboard’s “My commits”

The repositories dashboard’s MY COMMITS counter and activity chart count commits whose author matches the repository’s effective git identity — the local override when one is set, otherwise the global one. If your dashboard numbers look too low, check that the identity Birch has for that repository matches the name and email your commits were actually authored with.