# How to view the commit history in Git
The `git log` command is used to view the commit history of a Git repository. You can customize the output format to show specific details in a more readable or structured way. Below are some useful variations and formatting options for `git log`:
1. To show commit history in reverse chronological order, run:
```bash
git log
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/OgsnOAH.png align="center")
💡
If the logs are longer than your screen, it always goes into interactive mode. To escape and come back to the shell, quit git log with q.
2. To display each commit as a single line with its short SHA-1 hash and commit message, run:
```bash
git log --oneline
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/ZQEPyXS.png align="center")
3. To show more details about all previous commits, run:
```bash
git log -p
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/5E0ZEDJ.png align="center")
💡
To limit output to the last two commits, you can add the -2 option: git log -p -2
4. To show how many files changed and the number of insertions (+) and deletions (-), run:
```bash
git log --stat
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/gMCN6gk.png align="center")
5. To group commits by author and display commit messages under each author's name, run:
```bash
git shortlog
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/2nQUgYe.png align="center")
This command can be used to **quickly see who contributed the most** to a repository, to **get an overview of contributions** instead of a detailed history, and to **prepare contributor statistics** for reports or release notes.
6. To visualize some work with branches, run the command:
```bash
git log --graph --oneline
```
* `--graph` → Displays a commit graph showing branch relationships.
* `--oneline` → Shows each commit in a single line.
![](https://i.imgur.com/CqMy9Vd.png align="center")
We can see that `second-branch` was created and merged with the `master` branch.
7. To completely change the log output to display a structured and visually enhanced commit history, use the `--pretty` option:
```bash
git log --pretty="%C(yellow) Commit: %h %C(magenta)Date: %ad %C(red) Message: %s %C(cyan) Author: %an" --date=human
```
* `--pretty="..."` → Customizes the format of the log output.
* `%C(yellow)` → Changes `Hash:` text color to yellow.
* `%h` → Displays the short commit hash.
* `%ad` → Displays a date of commit.
* `%s` → Shows the commit message.
* `%an` → Shows who committed the changes.
* `--date=human` → Formats the date in a human-readable way (e.g., "2 days ago" instead of a timestamp).
![](https://i.imgur.com/npcjabs.png align="center")
💡
If --pretty="" contains a custom format string (using %h, %s, %C for colors, etc.), Git treats it as format: automatically. Therefore, you don’t need to explicitly write format: when using a custom format.
8. To show commit stats with the `pretty` option, run:
```bash
git log --pretty=format:"%Cred %h - %Cgreen %an: %C(yellow) %s" --stat
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/n8X2sFb.png align="center")
9. To create an alias called `lg` , we need to change the configuration file (`config`), on `global` table (`--global`) by adding the following entry:
```bash
git config --global alias.lg 'log --color --graph --pretty="%C(red) %h%Creset - %C(yellow) %s %C(green) (%cr) %C(blue) <%an>"'
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/oyLAg57.png align="center")
10. To check the alias definition, run the command:
```bash
git config --global --get alias.lg
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/O6yXu9f.png align="center")
### Querying through `git log`
So far we used ALL information from `git log`. It is possible to narrow the search by querying though the `git log`. We can query through `git log` using various filters and options to find specific commits based on author, date, message, file changes, branches, and more.
1. To show all commits done by 2 people, we can use regex:
```bash
git log --author="John Doe\|Alice"
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/jPFSz8f.png align="center")
2. To search for commit by date, run:
```bash
git log --since="2024-01-01" --until="2024-02-01"
```
This will show commits made between Jan 1, 2024, and Feb 1, 2024
3. To search for commits by message (keyword search) and make the search case-insensitive, run:
```bash
git log --grep="Feature" --grep="bug fix" --regexp-ignore-case
```
This will find commits where the message contains both "bug fix", ‘'“BUG FIX“, “Bug fix“, “FEATURE“, “Feature“, "feature".
![](https://i.imgur.com/MdwVz5P.png align="center")
4. To search for commits that modified several files, run:
```bash
git log -- testfile-01 branchfile-01
```
This will show commits affecting *testfile-01* and *branchfile-01*.
![](https://imgur.com/fKbEBc1.png align="center")
💡
Using the -- we inform git that we have files in mind, not branches.
5. To show the last 5 commits, run:
```bash
git log -5
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/t7OA3nf.png align="center")
6. To list only merge commits, run:
```bash
git log --merges
git log --no-merges
```
* `--no-merges` - excludes merge commits from the output, run:
![](https://i.imgur.com/t6Cw3cc.png align="center")
7. To search for commits from a specific branch, run:
```bash
git log main
git log master..second-branch
git log second-branch..master
```
![](https://i.imgur.com/PKmiB41.png align="center")
`git log master..second-branch` compares the commit history of both branches and shows commits that exist in `second-branch` but are missing in `master`. Once the branch `second-branch` is merged into `master`, all its commits become part of `master`’s history. Therefore, Git finds nothing unique in `second-branch` and the output returns nothing
`git log second-branch..master` shows commits in `master` that `second-branch` doesn’t have.
8. To get a precise result, we can combine multiple filters:
```bash
git log --author="John Doe" --grep="bug-fix" --since="10 weeks ago"
```
## References
1. [git log documentation](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log)