Install & open a site

Editors download one app — there’s no dev server to run and no command line to touch. There’s a macOS app today; Windows and Linux are on the way.

The start screen — sign in with GitHub, add a site by address, or reopen one you've used before.

What you need today

• git. Orbit uses the git on the computer. A new Mac doesn’t have it yet: Orbit says so on its start screen and its Install button starts Apple’s free developer tools installer (a few minutes, once). Then come back to Orbit.
• A name for your edits. Signed in with GitHub, your edits are credited to your GitHub account. Otherwise Orbit asks once for a name and email (kept in Orbit’s own settings — it never uses or changes the computer’s git settings).
• Access to the site’s repository. Public sites (like the demo site, which opens from Help ▸ Open the Demo Site) open with no login. A private site needs a sign-in — see below. Without it Orbit says it couldn’t open this site.

Private sites on GitHub: sign in in Orbit

Orbit MD 1.1 and later. Click Sign in with GitHub on the start screen, enter the code it shows on GitHub, and private sites open with nothing else to set up — Orbit uses your sign-in to open, update and publish them. Your GitHub access also decides what you can do on each site. See Sign in with GitHub.

Other hosts (and Orbit 1.0): sign in on the computer

For GitLab, Bitbucket and other hosts — or GitHub on Orbit 1.0 — Orbit uses the computer’s own git login. A one-time step, often done by whoever sets up the editor’s computer:

1. Install GitHub CLI — the installer from cli.github.com (or brew install gh if you use Homebrew).
2. Open Terminal and run gh auth login. Choose GitHub.com, HTTPS, Yes to “authenticate Git with your GitHub credentials”, and Login with a web browser — then sign in to GitHub in the browser page that opens.
3. Back in Orbit, add the site again.

GitLab and Bitbucket work the same way with their own sign-in tools or an SSH key. Developers who already push to the repository from this computer (with SSH keys or a saved login) don’t need to do anything.

On the way: git bundled inside Orbit, so a new Mac needs no Apple developer tools either.

Opening a site

Point Orbit at your repo one of two ways:

• Clone by URL — paste the repository’s plain git URL (e.g. https://github.com/you/site.git or git@github.com:you/site.git) and Orbit does a partial, sparse clone (just src/content + your assets — see Repo layout), so opening a site is quick even for a large repo. Don’t put a token or password in the URL — Orbit rejects credential-bearing URLs and signs in with your GitHub sign-in, or your computer’s own git login / SSH key, instead.
• Open a local folder — point Orbit at a clone you already have on disk.

Either way, Orbit checks it’s a site it can edit before it opens — an Astro site, or any other generator with a content map.