What is the extension of your file? Please give SmartGit 20.2 preview a try: https://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/preview/

Please update to the latest intermediate build 15157 and set the low-level property repositorySearch.autoSearchInDialog to false.

It is much easier to find something in a (alphabetically) sorted list than in a recently-used-sorted list.

But you may change the amount of displayed repositories by tweaking the low-level properties repositories.maxNonFavorite and repositories.maxCount.

There will be no option to switch back to 19.1 style. But what exactly is the problem with the combined node, especially because you can now see the index and working tree files (optionally) in separate tables?

SmartGit 20.2 preview build 16019+ will have shortcuts editable in the preferences for all windows.

The reason why it starts searching automatically is that you might have used a script to check out a project's dozens of repositories. Are you using a system with hard disk or SSD? For my machine (with SSD) the default search only takes ~2s.

In SmartGit you can right-click a directory to put it into one of the ignore lists.

Please verify if the tool is configured the same way as shown above.

And when right-clicking one of the selected branches in the Branches view?

You should select 2 branches with Ctrl+click.