Show HN: Git for Normies

When I was younger, about 10, I remember constantly going into %AppData% in Windows and taking "snapshots" of my Minecraft worlds by copying them into a folder and putting a timestamp on them. Admittedly, it got pretty annoying. A couple days ago, I saw my brother doing the exact same thing, but instead of .mcworld files, he was "backing up" image files by making copies of them and chucking them into a folder. He's a digital artist, and when I asked him to learn Git, he said, in these exact words, "What in the hacker crap is this?!"

Then I got an idea - if Git's a thing, but it's not too user-friendly for non-power users, what if I implement a GUI-based version manager? After all, I've seen my classmates in high school fiddle around with Google Docs' version history plenty; maybe this might be useful.

So, I spent the last few days building this. I call it "be kind, please rewind." You know, those stickers from Blockbuster cassettes.

It's a simple, local-only versioning tool that runs in the system tray. You point it at a file or a folder, and it automatically saves a snapshot every time a file changes (or on a timer if you prefer). There's no command line, no staging, no commits, no pushes. It's designed to be a simple safety net that you set once and forget about.

For my brother, I added a preview pane for images. For text files, it has a side-by-side diff viewer. You can add notes to each snapshot, and even give them custom names like "first draft" or "before i tried the new thing," so you're not just looking at a list of timestamps.

It's not meant to replace Git, but rather to be that simple "single-player" use case for designers, writers, students, and even beginner devs working on a single file who just want a simple undo history without the complexity of a full vcs.

It's built with Python and PyQt5. I'd be grateful if you'd take a look.

Source: https://github.com/sirbread/be-kind-please-rewind Binary: https://github.com/sirbread/be-kind-please-rewind/releases/t...