You can search commits by using search qualifiers in any combination to narrow your search results.

Tips:

  • This article contains example searches on the GitHub.com website, but you can use the same search filters on your GitHub Enterprise instance.
  • For a list of search syntaxes that you can add to any search qualifier to further improve your results, see "Understanding the search syntax".
  • Use quotations around multi-word search terms. For example, if you want to search for issues with the label "In progress," you'd search for label:"in progress". Search is not case sensitive.

Note: When you search for commits, only the default branch of a repository is searched. In most cases, this will be the master branch.

Search within commit messages

You can find commits that contain particular words in the message. For example, fix typo matches commits containing the words "fix" and "typo."

Search by author or committer

You can find commits by a particular user with the author or committer qualifiers.

Qualifier Example
author:USERNAME author:defunkt matches commits authored by @defunkt.
committer:USERNAME committer:defunkt matches commits committed by @defunkt.

The author-name and committer-name qualifiers match commits by the name of the author or committer.

Qualifier Example
author-name:NAME author-name:wanstrath matches commits with "wanstrath" in the author name.
committer-name:NAME committer-name:wanstrath matches commits with "wanstrath" in the committer name.

The author-email and committer-email qualifiers match commits by the author's or committer's full email address.

Qualifier Example
author-email:EMAIL author-email:chris@github.com matches commits authored by chris@github.com.
committer-email:EMAIL committer-email:chris@github.com matches commits committed by chris@github.com.

Search within a user or organization's repositories

To find commits from all repositories owned by a certain user or organization, use the user or org qualifier. To find commits from a specific repository, use the repo qualifier.

Qualifier Example
user:USERNAME gibberish user:defunkt matches commit messages with the word "gibberish" in repositories owned by @defunkt.
org:ORGNAME test org:github matches commit messages with the word "test" in repositories owned by @github.
repo:USERNAME/REPO language repo:defunkt/gibberish matches commit messages with the word "language" in @defunkt's "gibberish" repository.

Search by authored or committed date

Use the author-date and committer-date qualifiers to match commits authored or committed within the specified date range.

Dates support greater than, less than, and range qualifiers.

Qualifier Example
author-date:YYYY-MM-DD author-date:<2016-01-01 matches commits authored before 2016-01-01.
committer-date:YYYY-MM-DD committer-date:>2016-01-01 matches commits committed after 2016-01-01.

Filter merge commits

The merge qualifier filters merge commits.

Qualifier Example
merge:true merge:true matches merge commits.
merge:false merge:false matches non-merge commits.

Search by hash

The hash qualifier matches commits with the specified SHA-1 hash.

Qualifier Example
hash:HASH hash:124a9a0ee1d8f1e15e833aff432fbb3b02632105 matches commits with the hash 124a9a0ee1d8f1e15e833aff432fbb3b02632105.

Search by parent

The parent qualifier matches commits whose parent has the specified SHA-1 hash.

Qualifier Example
parent:HASH parent:124a9a0ee1d8f1e15e833aff432fbb3b02632105 matches children of commits with the hash 124a9a0ee1d8f1e15e833aff432fbb3b02632105.

Filter public or private repositories

The is qualifier matches public or private commits.

Qualifier Example
is:public is:public matches public commits.
is:private is:private matches private commits.

Further reading