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git log and git show: How to View Commit History

Read Git history with git log, use --oneline, --graph, -n, --author, --grep and path filters, inspect a commit with git show, and understand commit IDs and HEAD.

Beginner7 min readUpdated
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Git keeps every commit, so the history answers questions such as "when did this change?" and "who wrote this?". Here we use a small repository with four commits.

git log#

Terminal
git log
Output
commit ba5856ee63f34eceecaddd4d37d07b5ede586db8
Author: Ravi Kumar <ravi@example.com>
Date:   Thu Nov 5 09:15:00 2026 +0530

    Add rent reminder

commit 3b9e2f31489cae285a4944c60ad8dfd041f3f6d3
Author: Asha Rao <asha@example.com>
Date:   Thu Nov 5 09:10:00 2026 +0530

    Add README

commit 0a307519446a264c8acf34d683be0877384acb85
Author: Asha Rao <asha@example.com>
Date:   Thu Nov 5 09:05:00 2026 +0530

    Add reminder to call the bank

commit 3b1b8d5afc4ced2f188414298d045b62b8f5c2bf
Author: Asha Rao <asha@example.com>
Date:   Thu Nov 5 09:00:00 2026 +0530

    Add shopping note

For each commit you see its full ID, author, date and message, newest first. If the output is long, Git shows it in a pager: press Space to scroll and q to quit.

The 40-character ID is a SHA-1 hash calculated from the commit's content, parents, author and time. Change anything and the ID changes. The first seven or so characters are normally enough to identify a commit.

HEAD (-> main) in the log means you are on the main branch, and main points to this commit. Think of HEAD as "where I am now".

You can count backwards from it: HEAD~1 is the previous commit, HEAD~2 is two commits back.

Shorter views#

Terminal
git log --oneline
Output
ba5856e Add rent reminder
3b9e2f3 Add README
0a30751 Add reminder to call the bank
3b1b8d5 Add shopping note

Limit the number of commits with -n:

Terminal
git log --oneline -n 2
Output
ba5856e Add rent reminder
3b9e2f3 Add README

Filtering#

By author:

Terminal
git log --oneline --author="Ravi"
Output
ba5856e Add rent reminder

By words in the message:

Terminal
git log --oneline --grep="bank"
Output
0a30751 Add reminder to call the bank

Commits that changed one file:

Terminal
git log --oneline -- README.md
Output
3b9e2f3 Add README

Other useful filters are --since="2 weeks ago" and --until="2026-01-01".

Which files changed#

--stat adds a summary of the files changed in each commit:

Terminal
git log --stat -n 1
Output
commit ba5856ee63f34eceecaddd4d37d07b5ede586db8
Author: Ravi Kumar <ravi@example.com>
Date:   Thu Nov 5 09:15:00 2026 +0530

    Add rent reminder

 notes.txt | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

Inspect one commit#

git show displays a commit and exactly what it changed:

Terminal
git show HEAD~1
Output
commit 3b9e2f31489cae285a4944c60ad8dfd041f3f6d3
Author: Asha Rao <asha@example.com>
Date:   Thu Nov 5 09:10:00 2026 +0530

    Add README

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17e0f0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+# Notes

The lines starting with + were added. You will learn to read this format in the next lesson.

To see a file as it was in an older commit, without changing anything:

Terminal
git show HEAD~2:notes.txt
Output
Buy milk
Call the bank

The graph view#

Once you have branches, this view shows how they fit together:

Terminal
git log --oneline --graph --all

It is so useful that many developers save it as an alias:

Terminal
git config --global alias.lg "log --oneline --graph --all"
git lg

Common mistakes#

Practice#

Practice exercise

In this repository, print the commits written by Asha in one-line format, then print only the first line of notes.txt as it was two commits before HEAD.

Show hint

git show HEAD~2:notes.txt prints the file. Pipe it to head -n 1.

Show solution
Terminal
git log --oneline --author="Asha"
git show HEAD~2:notes.txt | head -n 1
Output
3b9e2f3 Add README
0a30751 Add reminder to call the bank
3b1b8d5 Add shopping note
Buy milk

Key takeaway#

Next: Seeing Changes with git diff.

Finished this lesson?

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