How-To: Keep Your Omarchy Dotfiles in Git Before Every Update

Omarchy updates move fast, and release candidates sometimes change keybindings and defaults. Before I update, I want a clean snapshot of my own tweaks so I can see what changed and roll back one file instead of the whole system.

Set it up once

1. Make a bare repo: git init --bare ~/.dotfiles
2. Add an alias: alias dot='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME'
3. Hide untracked noise: dot config status.showUntrackedFiles no
4. Track only the files you actually changed, for example your Hyprland bindings and input config under ~/.config/hypr/, plus things like your terminal and Waybar configs: dot add ~/.config/hypr/bindings.conf
5. Commit: dot commit -m "baseline"

Before each update

1. dot status and dot commit -am "pre-update"
2. Run the Omarchy update.
3. dot diff shows exactly what the update touched in your tracked files.
4. Don’t like a change? dot checkout -- path/to/file puts your version back.

Rules I follow

• Never commit secrets: no API keys, tokens or .env files. If you push the repo anywhere, make it private and double-check first.
• Track your overrides, not Omarchy’s own defaults, so updates can still improve things.

God Bless, and Use the Source!

References & Further Reading

• The Omarchy Manual
• Omarchy on GitHub
• Dotfiles (ArchWiki)
• git-init documentation