Pulldog is a native macOS client for reviewing Github & Gitlab pull requests. Aggregate multiple accounts into one seamless inbox. Create smart queries to cut through PR noise. Review with Spotlight actions, Widgets, and on-device Apple Intelligence. No browser tabs — just focused, macOS-native code reviews. 🐶
For the past year, I’ve been working on something called Pulldog 🐶 — a macOS client to review your pull requests without switching to a browser everytime.
Pulldog connects to Github & Gitlab and gives you a single place to monitor everything. The idea is to simplify code review and leverage all macOS features (Spotlight, Widgets & Shortcuts, …) as much as possible for those tasks that are one important aspect of our developer job to build quality products.
→ Why I built it
(1) Git account/repositories explosions
As a Swift developer I often had to do code review on multiple repositories, the ones for my team app, the ones for libraries that gravitates over app(s). Those numbers increase if mono-repository are not part of the equation. I also contribute to some open source projects sometimes so I need to keep an eye on those as well. And I was a bit frustrated that in 2025, I had to either monitor my email(s) or jump from one Github account to another. Because in a perfect world you have one git account to contribute to all of this but in practice you may have a personal account, and a profesional account. You can even work sometimes on Github for perso and on Gitlab for work.
That's why Pulldog propose to aggregate all your accounts in one place like a mailbox and don't really think anymore about it.
(2) Mental overhead ?
Another painpoint I had was that even if in theory developers can assign reviewers to their pull requests, in practice many teams don't (humans … right ? 😅) and you have to check on a regular basis if something can be reviewed by you. Can sounds fair but in reality they're lots of noise in this process, the ones I already approved, the ones that are not on my scoped (in case of big team with feature teams), … So to address this, Pulldog propose to create "Smart queries" on your sidebar that enable you to create advanced folders that filters from all your connected git account(s).
Here's some "Smart queries" that I like but well it's on your hand 🤾:
Last chance to review | PR approvals > X AND pipeline status is "succeed"
Old PRs | PR created date > X week(s)
Today's PRs | PR created date > begin day AND PR created date < end day
Feature team's PR | PR author name matching X, Y or Z
Big PRs | PR status is open AND (deleted lines > X OR added lines > X)
Small PRs | PR status is open AND deleted lines < X AND added lines < X
Most discussed (Useful for tech lead or staff engineer) | PR comments count > X
Mines | PR author name matching X
Mines that failed | PR author name matching X AND pipeline status is "failed"
Reviewed by me | PR status is open AND Comment author name matching X
Opened today | PR created date > begin day AND PR created date < end day AND PR status is open
Merged today | PR created date > begin day AND PR created date < end day AND PR status is merged
Code reviews take up a huge chunk of a developer’s time and I wanted to make reviews feel frictionless as possible — accessible, fast, and pleasant to use.
Under the hood, it's powered by SwiftUI, AppKit and SwiftData. I opened a beta program few months ago and now launching it on the Mac App Store.
🔔 Notifications: only subscribe to specific channels and to specific repositories and receive system notifications. No more email(s).
🧠 Review with Apple Intelligence (macOS 26+): On-device AI at no extra-cost that summarizes files and evaluates PRs locally — no code ever leaves your machine.
🔍 Spotlight Actions: run PR actions right from Spotlight like “merge my mergeables” or “rerun failed pipelines.”
🧩 Widgets: track reviews and team progress right from your Desktop or Notification Center.
🪄 Auto-commit filtering: instantly see what changed since your last review or approval.
🎨 Themes: 90+ themes & 185 languages supported.
🎭 Memojify mode: replace missing avatars with Memojis to make reviews a little more human.
🔍 Search: search and filter across diffs, filenames, and changed lines with regex.
and more …
Pulldog doesn't pretend to replace Github or Gitlab; it’s here to fit alongside them — but in a way that makes macOS feel like the best place to do your reviews 90% of the time.
I’d love to get your feedback & suggestions — whether you’re a dev lead, reviewer, or contributor. If something feels off or missing, please let me know. It’s still evolving every week, and your input can really shape where it goes next.
The multi-account aggregation is such a real pain point.
Do you have plans for keyboard shortcut customization
for jumping between reviews? Would be a game changer.
Nice code review organization is genuinely underserved for solo devs and small teams. Curious whether you sync review notes or PR state to the cloud, or is everything stored locally on the Mac?
Much needed, especially with having multiple coding windows open these days :)
If a team wants to migrate from browser-based reviews to Pulldog, which 3 adoption metrics would you track first to decide whether to roll it out broadly? (e.g., first-review response time, PR aging backlog, cross-repo context switches)
As a solo dev juggling multiple side projects across both GitHub and GitLab, the context-switching pain is real. The "unified inbox for PRs" concept is exactly what I've been missing — I usually just forget open PRs exist until someone pings me 😅 The Spotlight integration is a nice touch too. Congrats on the launch, Paul!
That’s a really nice idea with lots of features from the start. And true, in reality you have to manage many different projects and GitHubs. Definitely going to have a look.
Had to click & check after seeing the name 🤣 Congrats on the product and the launch (and the name)!
Really nice work Paul. As someone who manages multiple repos across our team, the noise from PRs you've already approved or ones that aren't even in your scope is a real productivity killer. Love that you built this as a proper native macOS app instead of yet another Electron wrapper. The Apple Intelligence integration for on-device PR summaries is a smart move too - keeping code local is a big deal for teams that care about security. One question - any plans to support Bitbucket down the road, or is the focus staying on Github and Gitlab for now?
The multiple account aggregation is what sells me switching between personal and work GitHub accounts in the browser is one of those small frictions that adds up to a lot of wasted time over a week. Curious how it handles large PRs with hundreds of files changed, that's usually where native clients struggle because rendering diffs performantly is genuinely hard. Also wondering if the Apple Intelligence integration is actually useful for code review or more of a feature checkbox would love to know what it does in practice that speeds up your actual review workflow.
Finally someone built this. I manage PRs across multiple repos and the browser tab juggle is real. The Spotlight integration is what sells it for me -- being able to jump to a PR without context switching is huge. Do you support review actions directly in the app (approve, request changes, inline comments) or is it more of an inbox/triage tool that links back to GitHub?
Seems great! Only issue is that it's not for me. I really like the idea of simply reviewinga pr/mr without having to manage the repo, the thing is that managing a repo is not that hard or so difficult.
Also this really seems just like the GitLab or Github in browser review.
Been wanting something exactly like this. I juggle 3 GitHub orgs and a personal GitLab and honestly the tab switching for PRs was killing me. The Spotlight integration is a nice touch — does it support keyboard shortcuts for jumping between review comments? That would be a game changer for my workflow.
Hi 👋, I'm Paul — welcome
For the past year, I’ve been working on something called Pulldog 🐶 — a macOS client to review your pull requests without switching to a browser everytime.
Pulldog connects to Github & Gitlab and gives you a single place to monitor everything. The idea is to simplify code review and leverage all macOS features (Spotlight, Widgets & Shortcuts, …) as much as possible for those tasks that are one important aspect of our developer job to build quality products.
→ Why I built it
(1) Git account/repositories explosions
As a Swift developer I often had to do code review on multiple repositories, the ones for my team app, the ones for libraries that gravitates over app(s). Those numbers increase if mono-repository are not part of the equation. I also contribute to some open source projects sometimes so I need to keep an eye on those as well. And I was a bit frustrated that in 2025, I had to either monitor my email(s) or jump from one Github account to another. Because in a perfect world you have one git account to contribute to all of this but in practice you may have a personal account, and a profesional account. You can even work sometimes on Github for perso and on Gitlab for work.
That's why Pulldog propose to aggregate all your accounts in one place like a mailbox and don't really think anymore about it.
(2) Mental overhead ?
Another painpoint I had was that even if in theory developers can assign reviewers to their pull requests, in practice many teams don't (humans … right ? 😅) and you have to check on a regular basis if something can be reviewed by you. Can sounds fair but in reality they're lots of noise in this process, the ones I already approved, the ones that are not on my scoped (in case of big team with feature teams), … So to address this, Pulldog propose to create "Smart queries" on your sidebar that enable you to create advanced folders that filters from all your connected git account(s).
Here's some "Smart queries" that I like but well it's on your hand 🤾:
Last chance to review | PR approvals > X AND pipeline status is "succeed"
Old PRs | PR created date > X week(s)
Today's PRs | PR created date > begin day AND PR created date < end day
Feature team's PR | PR author name matching X, Y or Z
Big PRs | PR status is open AND (deleted lines > X OR added lines > X)
Small PRs | PR status is open AND deleted lines < X AND added lines < X
Most discussed (Useful for tech lead or staff engineer) | PR comments count > X
Mines | PR author name matching X
Mines that failed | PR author name matching X AND pipeline status is "failed"
Reviewed by me | PR status is open AND Comment author name matching X
Opened today | PR created date > begin day AND PR created date < end day AND PR status is open
Merged today | PR created date > begin day AND PR created date < end day AND PR status is merged
Code reviews take up a huge chunk of a developer’s time and I wanted to make reviews feel frictionless as possible — accessible, fast, and pleasant to use.
Under the hood, it's powered by SwiftUI, AppKit and SwiftData. I opened a beta program few months ago and now launching it on the Mac App Store.
That’s how Pulldog was born 🐶
💻 Website
📦 Mac App Store
→ Other features to mention
🔔 Notifications: only subscribe to specific channels and to specific repositories and receive system notifications. No more email(s).
🧠 Review with Apple Intelligence (macOS 26+): On-device AI at no extra-cost that summarizes files and evaluates PRs locally — no code ever leaves your machine.
🔍 Spotlight Actions: run PR actions right from Spotlight like “merge my mergeables” or “rerun failed pipelines.”
🧩 Widgets: track reviews and team progress right from your Desktop or Notification Center.
🪄 Auto-commit filtering: instantly see what changed since your last review or approval.
🎨 Themes: 90+ themes & 185 languages supported.
🎭 Memojify mode: replace missing avatars with Memojis to make reviews a little more human.
🔍 Search: search and filter across diffs, filenames, and changed lines with regex.
and more …
Pulldog doesn't pretend to replace Github or Gitlab; it’s here to fit alongside them — but in a way that makes macOS feel like the best place to do your reviews 90% of the time.
I’d love to get your feedback & suggestions — whether you’re a dev lead, reviewer, or contributor. If something feels off or missing, please let me know. It’s still evolving every week, and your input can really shape where it goes next.