How to Get Commit History in Git: A Complete Guide

Tracking your project’s progress and understanding changes over time is key to effective version control. Git makes it easy to view the commit history of a repository so you can see who changed what, when, and why.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to get commit history using simple and powerful Git commands.

Table of Contents

✅ View Commit History with `git log`

The most basic and commonly used command:

git log

This displays a list of commits in reverse chronological order (most recent first), showing:

Commit hash
Author
Date
Commit message

Example output:

commit e4e23dfc7d6a7c987c9abf26f3214c1ab58b8c42
Author: John Doe <jo**@ex*****.com>
Date:   Mon May 13 14:30:00 2024 +0530

    Fix typo in README

✅ Customize the Output

You can make git log more readable or tailored to your needs:

One-line format:

git log --oneline

Displays a simplified log with just the commit hash and message.

Graph view (shows branches and merges):

git log --oneline --graph --all

Visualizes the commit tree and branch structure.

Include file changes:

git log -p

Shows the diff of each commit.

✅ View Commit History for a Specific File

To see the history of changes to a single file:

git log path/to/your/file.txt

Add -p to also see what changed:

git log -p path/to/your/file.txt

✅ Short Summary Format

To get a concise summary:

git log --pretty=format:"%h - %an, %ar : %s"

This shows:

Commit hash
Author name
Relative date
Commit message

Example:

a1b2c3d - Alice, 3 days ago : Add login feature

🧩 Summary of Common Commands

Task	Command
View full commit history	`git log`
View in one-line format	`git log --oneline`
View with graph	`git log --oneline --graph --all`
View changes in each commit	`git log -p`
View history for a specific file	`git log path/to/file`
Custom summary format	`git log --pretty=format:"..."`

📌 Final Tips

Use q to exit the log view when it opens in a pager (like less).
Combine git log with grep to search commit messages:

git log --grep="bug fix"

Use GUI tools like GitKraken, Sourcetree, or GitHub Desktop for visual commit histories.

✅ View Commit History with git log