Daily Workflow

Viewing History

~15 min

One of Git's superpowers is letting you travel through time. Every commit is a snapshot you can inspect, compare, or return to.

We've prepared a repository with 4 commits for you to explore.

No commits yet.

Try These Commands

Use the Terminal to explore history. Follow the steps to see different views of the same commits.

See each commit with full details.

Show the full log:

git log

This shows hash, author, date, and message for each commit.

Open the Source Control tab and scroll to the Graph section to see the same commits visually.

Scan history quickly.

Look at a single commit in detail.

See what changed between two commits.

Terminal — /

Repository with 4 commits ready.

Try: git log

Explorer

No files yet.
Click + to create a file.

Select a file to edit

git log --oneline

Compact one-line view

git log --graph

ASCII graph of branches

git log -p

Show changes in each commit

git log -n 5

Show only last 5 commits

git log --author="name"

Filter by author

git log --since="2 weeks ago"

Filter by date

Reference	Meaning
HEAD	Current commit (where you are now)
HEAD~1	One commit before HEAD (parent)
HEAD~3	Three commits before HEAD
abc1234	Specific commit by hash (first 7 chars)
main	Latest commit on the main branch