General-purpose dotfiles utilities

These are programs that help with managing, syncing, and/or installing your dotfiles.

• Mackup (14601 stars) is an application settings and configuration manager. It automatically finds the location of settings files for a set of known applications and syncs them with Dropbox, Git, or any other supported method.
• chezmoi (13398 stars) makes it easy to manage your dotfiles across multiple machines, securely. chezmoi is easy to install, quick to start with, and is very powerful. You can install chezmoi and your dotfiles with a single command, without needing Python installed, or even git. Read how chezmoi compares to other dotfile managers.
• Dotbot (7101 stars) is a lightweight standalone tool to bootstrap dotfiles, making it easy to have a “one click” installation/upgrade process for your dotfiles.
• Home Manager (7077 stars) by Robert Helgesson is a system built for managing NixOS user environments using the Nix package manager and the Nixpkgs libraries.
• yadm (5130 stars) is a dotfile management tool which supports system-specific alternate files/templating, encryption of private data, custom bootstrap actions, and integration with other git-aware tools like vim-fugitive, tig, git-crypt, etc.
• rcm (3127 stars) is a set of well-documented shell scripts that help manage your dotfiles. It is easily installable on macOS with the homebrew package manager, but works on all Unix operating systems.
• Homesick (2390 stars) by Josh Nichols. Homesick makes it easy to symlink and clone dotfiles repos.
• vcsh (2198 stars) by Richard “RichiH” Hartmann. vcsh manages all your dotfiles in Git without the need for symlinks. Any number of Git repositories will co-exist in parallel in your $HOME without interfering with each other. Advanced use cases with different branches for different systems are supported by default. An extensive hook system lets you customize your repositories. vcsh includes batch push, pull, and status commands which operate on all your repositories at once.
• Homeshick (2107 stars) by Anders Ingemann is like Homesick but written in bash. Great to combine with myrepos.
• dotdrop (1788 stars) Save your dotfiles once, deploy them everywhere.
• shallow-backup (1243 stars) lets you easily create lightweight backups of installed packages, applications, fonts and dotfiles, and automatically push them to a remote Git repository.
• fresh (1180 stars) is a tool to source dotfiles from others into your own. It supports shell configuration (aliases, functions, etc.) as well as config files (e.g. ackrc and gitconfig). Think of it as Bundler for your dotfiles.
• dotter (896 stars) A dotfile manager and templater written in Rust, with Windows/Linux/Mac support.
• dotfiles (579 stars) Dotfile management made easy. Written in Python (available on PyPI) by Jon Bernard.
• comtrya (506 stars) configuration Management for Localhost / dotfiles.
• Ellipsis (357 stars) is a package manager for dotfiles.
• Dotsync (329 stars) utility for syncing dotfiles between multiple machines from a Git repo or push using rsync.
• Ghar (267 stars) by Brandon Philip. Ghar is a standalone Python script for managing Git repos symlinked into your home.
• dotfiler (239 stars) is inspired by homesick and Zach Holman’s dotfiles, made using principle of KISS.
• Homemaker (237 stars) by Alex Yatskov. Homemaker is a standalone tool written in Golang to manage both common and machine-specific dotfile settings. Homemaker can be configured in TOML, YAML or JSON.
• dotfiles (234 stars) Dotfiles symbolic links management CLI written in Go, with Windows/Linux/Mac support.
• Pearl (229 stars) is a brand new revolutionary package manager that allows to automatically activate dotfiles whenever shells or editors start via a smart hook mechanism. Dotfiles are treated as packages that coexist together seamlessly and can be fully controlled and synced across different systems. There is a wide range of packages already available in the Official Pearl Hub.
• dotgit (167 stars) by Kobus van Schoor. A comprehensive and versatile dotfiles manager which helps to synchronize your dotfiles between multiple computers and devices.
• kody (139 stars) is a dotfiles runner/manager written with node inspired by Zach Holman’s popular dotfiles.
• dfm (123 stars) is a utility to manage your dotfiles, lightweight and simple.
• bashdot (104 stars) is a minimalist dotfile management framework, written 100% in bash.
• GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager, useful for automatically (and safely) linking your dotfiles folder into your home directory.