Lots of non-git tools use them. Some that come to mind are ripgrep (by default ignores .gitignore'd files), some editors (greying them out in the file selector,

Lots of non-git tools use them. Some that come to mind are ripgrep (by default ignores .gitignore'd files), some editors (greying them out in the file selector, not searching them, etc), rustic (not backing them up), probably more.