How to Search for Commits by Author or Message

In a hurry? Watch our brief 1-minute vertical video that summarizes the info below.

The git log command is a powerful tool for inspecting the history of a repository. But when the history is long, it can be hard to find what you're looking for.

Luckily, git log comes with a variety of options to filter the commit history!

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Searching by Commit Message

To search for commits that contain a specific word or phrase in their message, you can use the --grep flag:

$ git log --grep="fix bug"

By default, this search is case-sensitive. To make it case-insensitive, you can add the -i flag:

$ git log --grep="fix bug" -i

Searching by Author

You can also filter commits by author using the --author flag:

$ git log --author="John Doe"

Combining Filters

You can combine multiple filters to narrow down your search even further. For example, to find all commits by a specific author within a certain time frame, you can combine the --author and --since flags:

$ git log --author="John Doe" --since="2023-01-01"

Tip

Searching Commits in Tower

In the Tower Git client, you can easily filter your commit history. A dedicated search bar allows you to filter by message, author, file path, commit hash, and date. Of course, you can also combine these filters to narrow down your search.

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