Undo a commit & redo

$ git commit -m "Something terribly misguided" # (0: Your Accident)
$ git reset HEAD~                              # (1)
# === If you just want to undo the commit, stop here! ===
[ edit files as necessary ]                    # (2)
$ git add .                                    # (3)
$ git commit -c ORIG_HEAD                      # (4)
  1. git reset is the command responsible for the undo. It will undo your last commit while leaving your working tree (the state of your files on disk) untouched. You'll need to add them again before you can commit them again.
  2. Make corrections to working tree files.
  3. git add anything that you want to include in your new commit.
  4. Commit the changes, reusing the old commit message. reset copied the old head to .git/ORIG_HEAD; commit with -c ORIG_HEAD will open an editor, which initially contains the log message from the old commit and allows you to edit it. If you do not need to edit the message, you could use the -C option.

Alternatively, to edit the previous commit (or just its commit message), commit --amend will add changes within the current index to the previous commit.

To remove (not revert) a commit that has been pushed to the server, rewriting history with git push origin main --force[-with-lease] is necessary. It's almost always a bad idea to use --force; prefer --force-with-lease instead, and as noted in the git manual:

You should understand the implications of rewriting history if you amend a commit that has already been published.


Further Reading

You can use git reflog to determine the SHA-1 for the commit to which you wish to revert. Once you have this value, use the sequence of commands as explained above.


HEAD~ is the same as HEAD~1. The article What is the HEAD in git? is helpful if you want to uncommit multiple commits.

๐ŸŒ
Git Tower
git-tower.com โ€บ learn โ€บ git faq โ€บ how to undo, revert, or delete a git commit
How to Undo, Revert, or Delete a Git Commit | Learn Version Control with Git
Undo the last commit with git reset, revert an older commit with git revert, or remove a commit from history with interactive rebase. All scenarios, step by step.
Published ย  4 days ago
๐ŸŒ
freeCodeCamp
freecodecamp.org โ€บ news โ€บ git-revert-commit-how-to-undo-the-last-commit
Git Revert Commit โ€“ How to Undo the Last Commit
August 31, 2021 - If you want to reset to the last commit and also remove all unstaged changes, you can use the --hard option: ... This will undo the latest commit, but also any uncommitted changes.
Discussions

git checkout - How do I revert a Git repository to a previous commit? - Stack Overflow
Credits go to a similar Stack Overflow question, Revert to a commit by a SHA hash in Git?. ... I did that, but then I wasn't able to commit and push to the remote repository. I want a specific older commit to become HEAD... 2012-09-24T18:17:28.717Z+00:00 ... @Lennon. Say you made a change, committed, and pushed it. You want both local and remote to appear as though this never happened. First git reset --hard HEAD^ You've now blown away all local changes from the last ... More on stackoverflow.com
๐ŸŒ stackoverflow.com
How do you revert your code back to your last git commit?
Don't forget that you can always make a copy of the whole git repo folder on your computer so you can restore if you screw something up. Then you can mess around carefree! More on reddit.com
๐ŸŒ r/learnprogramming
21
1
June 4, 2022
Undoing last commit
You should use git revert in this situation. It will undo the changes made by the faulty commit. Then push the newly created commit to remote. See https://git-scm.com/docs/git-revert for more info. More on reddit.com
๐ŸŒ r/git
12
6
January 7, 2021
How to undo "Undo Last Commit" in source control action in vscode?

That's outside the scope of the git ui, but it's possible on the command line. git reflog will provide a history list of the hashes your working tree has gone through, including ones you've undone. You can then git reset to the hash id you want.

More on reddit.com
๐ŸŒ r/vscode
7
6
August 6, 2019
Top answer
1 of 16
30139

Undo a commit & redo

$ git commit -m "Something terribly misguided" # (0: Your Accident)
$ git reset HEAD~                              # (1)
# === If you just want to undo the commit, stop here! ===
[ edit files as necessary ]                    # (2)
$ git add .                                    # (3)
$ git commit -c ORIG_HEAD                      # (4)
  1. git reset is the command responsible for the undo. It will undo your last commit while leaving your working tree (the state of your files on disk) untouched. You'll need to add them again before you can commit them again.
  2. Make corrections to working tree files.
  3. git add anything that you want to include in your new commit.
  4. Commit the changes, reusing the old commit message. reset copied the old head to .git/ORIG_HEAD; commit with -c ORIG_HEAD will open an editor, which initially contains the log message from the old commit and allows you to edit it. If you do not need to edit the message, you could use the -C option.

Alternatively, to edit the previous commit (or just its commit message), commit --amend will add changes within the current index to the previous commit.

To remove (not revert) a commit that has been pushed to the server, rewriting history with git push origin main --force[-with-lease] is necessary. It's almost always a bad idea to use --force; prefer --force-with-lease instead, and as noted in the git manual:

You should understand the implications of rewriting history if you amend a commit that has already been published.


Further Reading

You can use git reflog to determine the SHA-1 for the commit to which you wish to revert. Once you have this value, use the sequence of commands as explained above.


HEAD~ is the same as HEAD~1. The article What is the HEAD in git? is helpful if you want to uncommit multiple commits.

2 of 16
13009

Undoing a commit is a little scary if you don't know how it works. But it's actually amazingly easy if you do understand. I'll show you the 4 different ways you can undo a commit.

Say you have this, where C is your HEAD and (F) is the state of your files.

   (F)
A-B-C
    โ†‘
  master

Option 1: git reset --hard

You want to destroy commit C and also throw away any uncommitted changes. You do this:

git reset --hard HEAD~1

The result is:

 (F)
A-B
  โ†‘
master

Now B is the HEAD. Because you used --hard, your files are reset to their state at commit B.

Option 2: git reset

Maybe commit C wasn't a disaster, but just a bit off. You want to undo the commit but keep your changes for a bit of editing before you do a better commit. Starting again from here, with C as your HEAD:

   (F)
A-B-C
    โ†‘
  master

Do this, leaving off the --hard:

git reset HEAD~1

In this case the result is:

   (F)
A-B-C
  โ†‘
master

In both cases, HEAD is just a pointer to the latest commit. When you do a git reset HEAD~1, you tell Git to move the HEAD pointer back one commit. But (unless you use --hard) you leave your files as they were. So now git status shows the changes you had checked into C. You haven't lost a thing!

Option 3: git reset --soft

For the lightest touch, you can even undo your commit but leave your files and your index:

git reset --soft HEAD~1

This not only leaves your files alone, it even leaves your index alone. When you do git status, you'll see that the same files are in the index as before. In fact, right after this command, you could do git commit and you'd be redoing the same commit you just had.

Option 4: you did git reset --hard and need to get that code back

One more thing: Suppose you destroy a commit as in the first example, but then discover you needed it after all? Tough luck, right?

Nope, there's still a way to get it back. Type this

git reflog

and you'll see a list of (partial) commit SHAs (that is, hashes) that you've moved around in. Find the commit you destroyed, and do this:

git checkout -b someNewBranchName shaYouDestroyed

You've now resurrected that commit. Commits don't actually get destroyed in Git for some 90 days, so you can usually go back and rescue one you didn't mean to get rid of.

Top answer
1 of 16
12601

This depends a lot on what you mean by "revert".

Temporarily switch to a different commit

If you want to temporarily go back to it, fool around, then come back to where you are, all you have to do is check out the desired commit:

# This will detach your HEAD, that is, leave you with no branch checked out:
git checkout 0d1d7fc32

Or if you want to make commits while you're there, go ahead and make a new branch while you're at it:

git checkout -b old-state 0d1d7fc32

To go back to where you were, just check out the branch you were on again. (If you've made changes, as always when switching branches, you'll have to deal with them as appropriate. You could reset to throw them away; you could stash, checkout, stash pop to take them with you; you could commit them to a branch there if you want a branch there.)

Hard delete unpublished commits

If, on the other hand, you want to really get rid of everything you've done since then, there are two possibilities. One, if you haven't published any of these commits, simply reset:

# This will destroy any local modifications.
# Don't do it if you have uncommitted work you want to keep.
git reset --hard 0d1d7fc32

# Alternatively, if there's work to keep:
git stash
git reset --hard 0d1d7fc32
git stash pop
# This saves the modifications, then reapplies that patch after resetting.
# You could get merge conflicts, if you've modified things which were
# changed since the commit you reset to.

If you mess up, you've already thrown away your local changes, but you can at least get back to where you were before by resetting again.

Undo published commits with new commits

On the other hand, if you've published the work, you probably don't want to reset the branch, since that's effectively rewriting history. In that case, you could indeed revert the commits. In many enterprise organisations, the concept of "protected" branches will even prevent history from being rewritten on some major branches. In this case, reverting is your only option.

With Git, revert has a very specific meaning: create a commit with the reverse patch to cancel it out. This way you don't rewrite any history.

First figure out what commits to revert. Depending on the technique chosen below, you want to either revert only the merge commits, or only the non-merge commits.

# This lists all merge commits between 0d1d7fc and HEAD:
git log --merges --pretty=format:"%h" 0d1d7fc..HEAD | tr '\n' ' '

# This lists all non merge commits between 0d1d7fc and HEAD:
git log --no-merges --pretty=format:"%h" 0d1d7fc..HEAD | tr '\n' ' '

Note: if you revert multiple commits, the order matters. Start with the most recent commit.

# This will create three separate revert commits, use non merge commits only:
git revert a867b4af 25eee4ca 0766c053

# It also takes ranges. This will revert the last two commits:
git revert HEAD~2..HEAD

# Similarly, you can revert a range of commits using commit hashes (non inclusive of first hash):
git revert 0d1d7fc..a867b4a

# Reverting a merge commit. You can also use a range of merge commits here.
git revert -m 1 <merge_commit_sha>

# To get just one, you could use `rebase -i` to squash them afterwards
# Or, you could do it manually (be sure to do this at top level of the repo)
# get your index and work tree into the desired state, without changing HEAD:
git checkout 0d1d7fc32 .

# Then commit. Be sure and write a good message describing what you just did
git commit

The git-revert manpage actually covers a lot of this in its description. Another useful link is this git-scm.com section discussing git-revert.

If you decide you didn't want to revert after all, you can revert the revert (as described here) or reset back to before the revert (see the previous section).

You may also find this answer helpful in this case:
How can I move HEAD back to a previous location? (Detached head) & Undo commits

2 of 16
3981

Lots of complicated and dangerous answers here, but it's actually easy:

git revert --no-commit 0d1d7fc3..HEAD
git commit
git push

This will revert everything from the HEAD back to the commit hash (excluded), meaning it will recreate that commit state in the working tree as if every commit after 0d1d7fc3 had been walked back. You can then commit the current tree, and it will create a brand new commit essentially equivalent to the commit you "reverted" to.

(The --no-commit flag lets git revert all the commits at once- otherwise you'll be prompted for a message for each commit in the range, littering your history with unnecessary new commits.)

This is a safe and easy way to rollback to a previous state. No history is destroyed, so it can be used for commits that have already been made public.


Note on merge commits:
If one of the commits between 0766c053..HEAD (inclusive) is a merge then there will be an error popping up (to do with no -m specified). The following link may help those encountering that: Why does git revert complain about a missing -m option? (thanks @timhc22 for pointing out)

๐ŸŒ
Git
git-scm.com โ€บ docs โ€บ git-revert
Git - git-revert Documentation
Note: git revert is used to record some new commits to reverse the effect of some earlier commits (often only a faulty one). If you want to throw away all uncommitted changes in your working directory, you should see git-reset[1], particularly the --hard option.
๐ŸŒ
Medium
jeevabyte.medium.com โ€บ how-to-revert-to-a-previous-commit-in-git-and-make-it-the-latest-one-6ac766ff78f4
How to Revert to a Previous Commit in Git and Make It the Latest One | by Jeeva-AWSLabsJourney | Medium
March 9, 2025 - Scenario Method You want to completely remove the last 5 commits Hard Reset You want to go back 5 commits but keep the changes Soft Reset You want to undo the last 5 commits while preserving history Revert ยท Understanding how to revert commits in Git is crucial for managing version control ...
Find elsewhere
๐ŸŒ
Reddit
reddit.com โ€บ r/learnprogramming โ€บ how do you revert your code back to your last git commit?
r/learnprogramming on Reddit: How do you revert your code back to your last git commit?
June 4, 2022 -

Sorry for the noob question but all the google answers are spread out over 10 years and totally different answers. I can't find a common consensus on this and don't want to screw anything up.

I just need to go back to my last commit. I committed and everything was fine but recent code changes broke the site and I need to go back to when things were working.

It says in the terminal:

(use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

This is what I'm looking for right? If I do "git restore <file>" it will discard all my changes and go back to what the file was like before I made the breaking changes?

Also, if so, I have a lot of files to change, if I just do "git restore" without a specified file will it restore ALL the files that have been modified so I don't have to go one by one?

๐ŸŒ
Linode
linode.com โ€บ docs โ€บ guides โ€บ revert-last-git-commit
How to Revert the Last Commit in Git | Linode Docs
February 15, 2024 - Use the --soft option to roll back to a previous commit, while preserving file changes in the working directory and staging area. ... Use the --hard option to likewise roll back to a previous commit.
๐ŸŒ
Medium
medium.com โ€บ @sivaraaj โ€บ how-to-undo-the-most-recent-local-commits-in-git-7892fd717964
How to Undo the Most Recent Local Commits in Git ? | by Sivaraj Ramasamy | Medium
February 18, 2024 - $ git log --oneline a1b2c3d (HEAD -> main) Add new feature e4f5g6h Initial commit $ git reset --hard HEAD~1 HEAD is now at e4f5g6h Initial commit $ git status On branch main nothing to commit, working tree clean $ git log --oneline e4f5g6h (HEAD ...
๐ŸŒ
Graphite
graphite.com โ€บ guides โ€บ git-undo-last-commit
Git undo last commit - Graphite
Q: What's the difference between git reset --soft HEAD~ and git reset --hard HEAD~? A: git reset --soft HEAD~ undoes the last commit but leaves your changes in your working directory, so you can modify them and re-commit.
๐ŸŒ
Hostman
hostman.com โ€บ tutorials โ€บ how to revert the last commit in git
Revert the Last Commit in Git - Step-by-Step Guide
December 26, 2025 - You can clearly see that the last commit "Revert last commit" is no longer in git history. Unlike git reset --soft, git reset --hard resets the HEAD to the specified commit and discards any changes made after that commit.
Price ย  $
Call ย  +1 844 286 2130
Address ย  1999 Harrison St 1800 9079, 94612, Oakland
๐ŸŒ
GitLab
docs.gitlab.com โ€บ topics โ€บ git โ€บ undo
Revert and undo changes | GitLab Docs
Undo your last commit and put everything back in the staging area: ... Edit a file. ... If a file was changed in a commit, and you want to change it back to how it was in the previous commit, but keep the commit history, you can use git revert.
๐ŸŒ
Aviator
aviator.co โ€บ home โ€บ blog โ€บ how to git undo commit: methods and best practices
How to Git Undo Commit: Methods and Best Practices - Aviator Blog
February 10, 2025 - When working with local commits ... the history wonโ€™t affect others. Avoid using git reset โ€“hard unless necessary since this command erases uncommitted work permanently....
๐ŸŒ
GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org โ€บ git โ€บ how-to-revert-to-last-commit
How to Revert to Last Commit? - Git
June 6, 2024 - Reverting to the last commit means discarding the changes made after the last commit and bringing your working directory back to the state it was in at that commit. This is useful when recent changes have introduced errors, and you need to return to a stable state. There are several ways to accomplish this in Git...
๐ŸŒ
freeCodeCamp
freecodecamp.org โ€บ news โ€บ git-reverting-to-previous-commit-how-to-revert-to-last-commit
Git Reverting to Previous Commit โ€“ How to Revert to Last Commit
October 19, 2022 - If you want to undo a commit and the all the changes made after that commit, you attach the --hard flag to your git reset command. Let's test this out by reverting back to the first commit:
๐ŸŒ
Warp
warp.dev โ€บ terminus by warp โ€บ git โ€บ undoing git commits
How To Undo Your Last Git Commit(s) | Warp
November 30, 2023 - Explore ways to undo a commit, including git reset, git checkout, and git revert with git while preserving commit history.
๐ŸŒ
DataCamp
datacamp.com โ€บ blog โ€บ git-undo-last-commit
Git Undo Last Commit: Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners | DataCamp
June 23, 2025 - Run git revert HEAD~1. This creates a new commit that undoes the changes from the second-to-last commit (because HEAD~1 points to it).
๐ŸŒ
Sentry
sentry.io โ€บ sentry answers โ€บ git โ€บ revert a git repository to a previous commit
Revert a Git repository to a previous commit | Sentry
git revert HEAD~3...HEAD # revert ... prefer to delete previous commits rather than reverse them. To do this, you can use git reset --hard, specifying the commit to return to:...
๐ŸŒ
Nobledesktop
blog.nobledesktop.com โ€บ learn โ€บ git โ€บ undo changes in git: git checkout, git revert, & git reset
Undo Changes in Git: checkout, revert, & reset
April 19, 2026 - TIP: Add a number to the end to undo multiple commits. For example, to undo the last 2 commits (assuming both have not been pushed) run Git resetโ€”soft HEAD~2
๐ŸŒ
PhoenixNAP
phoenixnap.com โ€บ home โ€บ kb โ€บ sysadmin โ€บ git revert commit: how to undo last commit
Git Revert Commit: How to Undo Last Commit
February 4, 2026 - To reset to a previous commit, before any changes were made: ... This command wipes the slate clean back to the previous commit. Any changes you made will be lost after using the reset --hard command.