gh-dash: A Terminal UI for GitHub That Won’t Break Your Flow

If you live in the terminal and GitHub is your second home, you’ve probably felt the friction of switching contexts to check PRs, issues, or notifications. A quick gh command helps, but it’s still one-off. What if you could browse, filter, and act on your GitHub data without ever leaving the command line?

Enter gh-dash — a terminal user interface (TUI) for GitHub that keeps you inside your flow. No browser tabs, no context-switching. Just your terminal, a clean dashboard, and your repos.

What It Does

gh-dash is a Go-based TUI that shows you a real-time, scrollable view of your GitHub pull requests and issues. You can filter by repository, author, status, or assignee. You can open items in your browser, merge PRs, or check details — all from a keyboard-driven interface.

It’s not a full GitHub client. It’s a focused dashboard for the two things developers care about most: PRs you need to review and issues you’re tracking.

Why It’s Cool

• No mouse needed — everything is keyboard-driven. Arrow keys, j/k, and quick actions like o to open in browser.
• Lightweight and fast — written in Go, so startup is near-instant. It uses the GitHub API under the hood, but caching keeps things snappy.
• Customizable sections — you decide what shows up. Want only PRs assigned to you? Only issues labeled “bug”? You can filter with flags or a config file.
• Works with gh — if you already use the GitHub CLI (gh), gh-dash integrates naturally. It’s like having a tig for GitHub.
• No Electron — it’s a proper TUI, so it doesn’t eat your RAM or CPU. Feels like a native part of your terminal environment.

How to Try It

Install it via gh extension (the easiest path):

gh extension install dlvhdr/gh-dash

Then run:

gh dash

That’s it. You’ll see your open PRs and issues in a split pane. Use ? to see available keybindings.

If you’re not using gh, you can also install via Homebrew or Go:

brew install dlvhdr/gh-dash

Or if you have Go installed:

go install github.com/dlvhdr/gh-dash@latest

Make sure you’ve authenticated with gh auth login first — the tool needs access to your GitHub account.

Final Thoughts

gh-dash isn’t trying to replace your browser or the GitHub CLI. It’s solving a specific problem: staying in the flow when you’re deep in terminal work. If you’re someone who hates alt-tabbing to check a PR status, or you want a quick overview of your team’s open work without noise, this is worth a try.

It’s clean, it’s fast, and it doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. For a dev who works mostly in the terminal, that’s exactly the right tool.

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