Accounts authenticate, identities author
Sign into forges per remote; commit as a pinned name and email in the repository’s local git config. The two never feed each other.
Most git clients conflate “who am I signed in as” with “who am I committing as.” GitLane splits them, because they answer different questions.
| Accounts | Identities | |
|---|---|---|
| Answer | Who authenticates? | Who authored this? |
| Used for | Clone, fetch, pull, push, PR APIs | The commit’s author and committer |
| Stored in | HTTPS remote URL / OS keychain / gh |
The repository’s local git config |
| Scope | Per remote | Per repository |
Signing into an account never prefills an identity. Picking an identity never changes how you authenticate.
Accounts
Sign into several GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Cursor Origin accounts, then pick which one each remote uses. The account becomes the username in the HTTPS remote URL (git remote set-url), so your credential helper resolves it the same way from a terminal. SSH remotes pick by key.
- GitHub can inject
gh auth git-credentialper invocation. - GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure Repos, Cursor Origin, and unknown HTTPS remotes use your git credential helper or GCM. Origin remotes never inject
ghcredentials. - GitLane-owned tokens stay in the OS keychain and never cross into the frontend.
A repository is fully usable with no account connected at all.
Identities
An identity card is a name, an email, and optionally a GPG or SSH signing key. Applying one writes the repository’s local git config — never the global one — so you don’t commit to a client repo with your personal email, or push unsigned when the repo expects verification.
Cards are reusable; a card can carry a per-repository email override. If you pin nothing, GitLane commits as “this computer” — your global git config, like a terminal. The Identity panel’s only prefill is “adopt the current git-config identity as a card,” never an account.
Find both under Settings → Accounts and Settings → Identities.
Good to know
Provider sign-out deletes GitLane’s own keychain token. Forget saved HTTPS credential runs
git credential reject. Doing one does not do the other.
GitLane reads identity back out of git config. If you change user.email in a terminal, the app reflects it.
Full walkthrough: Accounts and identities.
Installers: Download GitLane.