Git Commit List: How to List, Filter, and Format Commits

The most basic way to see your commit list is git log. It shows commits in reverse chronological order — newest first — with the full hash, author, date, and message.

git log

For a condensed view, use --oneline to collapse each commit to a single line with an abbreviated hash and the first line of the message. This is usually what you want when scanning history quickly.

git log --oneline

Use --author to filter commits by the person who made them. This is a regex match against the author name or email, so partial matches work.

# Commits by a specific author
git log --author="Jane"

# Combine with --oneline for a quick list
git log --oneline --author="jane@example.com"

This is especially useful when you want to review your own work before a standup or weekly recap. Git Progress automates this across all your repos so you never have to run these commands manually.

The --since and --until flags accept dates in multiple formats: ISO dates, relative dates, or natural language.

# Commits from the last week
git log --since="1 week ago"

# Commits in a date range
git log --since="2026-01-01" --until="2026-02-01"

# Combine with author
git log --oneline --author="Jane" --since="last Monday"

Pass a file path after -- to see only commits that touched that file. This is invaluable when debugging regressions.

# Commits that changed a specific file
git log --oneline -- src/auth/login.ts

# Show the actual diff for each commit
git log -p -- src/auth/login.ts

The --grep flag searches commit messages. Combine it with -i for case-insensitive search.

# Find commits mentioning "fix"
git log --oneline --grep="fix"

# Case-insensitive search
git log --oneline --grep="auth" -i

The --pretty=format flag gives you full control over what fields appear and how they are formatted. Here are the most useful placeholders:

• %h — abbreviated commit hash
• %an — author name
• %ae — author email
• %ar — relative date (e.g., "2 days ago")
• %s — commit subject (first line of message)

# Compact custom format
git log --pretty=format:"%h %ar %an: %s"

# CSV-friendly output
git log --pretty=format:"%H,%an,%ae,%ai,%s"

If you find yourself running these commands regularly, Git Progress can generate these summaries automatically across all your repositories — no terminal required.