GitHub’s user interface has gotten much better over the years, but sometimes you just need quick access without clicking. Here are a few GitHub URL tips to get you the data you want faster. One cool thing is that all of these tips give raw text output, so they work great with curl and other CLI tools.
Public SSH keys
If you want to get a user’s public SSH keys, you can add .keys to the end of their user profile URL. Here’s mine.
Profile image
If you want to get a user’s profile picture, you can add .png to the end of their user profile URL.
Public GPG keys
If you want to get GPG public keys, you can add .gpg to the end of their user profile URL.
RSS feeds
There are lots of different feeds you can subscribe to.
Repo commits
https://github.com/$USER/$REPO/commits.atom
Repo releases
https://github.com/$USER/$REPO/releases.atom
Repo tags
https://github.com/$USER/$REPO/tags.atom
User feeds
Public RSS feed will show public user activity, like repo stars and releases.
There’s also a private user feed, which is great if you don’t log into GitHub often.
It requires you to click in the user interface, but I still find it incredibly useful. Log in to your account and on your dashboard, scroll all the way to the bottom and click “Subscribe to your news feed”. This will generate a private token automatically and send you to https://github.com/$USER.private.atom?token=...
You can plug this directly into an RSS reader and it’ll include everything that normally shows up on your private dashboard feed, like repos and users you follow, and project releases.
Security advisories
This is a public RSS feed for GitHub security advisories.
https://github.com/security-advisories.atom
Global timeline
Diffs
You can compare branches in a repo by adding /compare/[fork-user:]$BRANCH...$BRANCH to the end of a repo URL.
If you want to compare a ai branch to the main branch for my mywiki, you can check out:
https://github.com/0xf61/mywiki/compare/main…ai
If you had a fork of the repo, you could add your username before main like this:
https://github.com/0xf61/mywiki/compare/$USER:main…ai
The cool thing is you can get a raw patch or diff output using the same URL and adding .patch and .diff to the end.