How can I uncommit my last commit in git?
Is it
git reset --hard HEAD
or
git reset --hard HEAD^
?
8 Answers
If you aren't totally sure what you mean by "uncommit" and don't know if you want to use git reset, please see "Revert to a previous Git commit".
If you're trying to understand git reset better, please see "Can you explain what "git reset" does in plain English?".
If you know you want to use git reset, it still depends what you mean by "uncommit". If all you want to do is undo the act of committing, leaving everything else intact, use:
git reset --soft HEAD^
If you want to undo the act of committing and everything you'd staged, but leave the work tree (your files) intact:
git reset HEAD^
And if you actually want to completely undo it, throwing away all uncommitted changes, resetting everything to the previous commit (as the original question asked):
git reset --hard HEAD^
The original question also asked it's HEAD^ not HEAD. HEAD refers to the current commit - generally, the tip of the currently checked-out branch. The ^ is a notation which can be attached to any commit specifier, and means "the commit before". So, HEAD^ is the commit before the current one, just as master^ is the commit before the tip of the master branch.
Here's the portion of the git-rev-parse documentation describing all of the ways to specify commits (^ is just a basic one among many).
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79@Jefromi: every answer in this question is totally wrong to emphasize --hard, the --soft, is necessary for it to be "uncommit last commit", a --hard will not only uncommit but also destroy your commit. I nearly destroyed a whole day's of work since I didn't recheck what --hard meant assuming 70+ answer wouldn't be wrong. Fortunately reflog saved my day, but it wouldn't have to be that way.– Lie RyanCommented Apr 7, 2012 at 4:27
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27@jameshfisher It's the answer to the original question ("which of these two is it?") and there was a giant warning right underneath it. I'm editing, but... if you see a question that looks from the title like what you want, and you just blindly run the first command you see in the first answer, this is going to keep happening to you.– CascabelCommented Jul 1, 2014 at 16:17
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get reset --soft HEAD^is what i was looking for!!! SO sweet, what is the term for putting changes into the current working head? or directory. Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 17:36 -
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4What if your only commit local is the first commit?git reset --soft "HEAD^" fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD^': unknown revision or path not in the working tree. Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this: 'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]' Commented Jan 21, 2019 at 18:42
git reset --soft HEAD^ Will keep the modified changes in your working tree.
git reset --hard HEAD^ WILL THROW AWAY THE CHANGES YOU MADE !!!
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6When I put: git reset --soft HEAD^ Git says me More? What it means? Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 3:28
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7That's probably because your CLI interprets the "^" differently. Perhaps try put "HEAD^" in quotes?– KennyCommented Oct 26, 2021 at 12:11
To keep the changes from the commit you want to undo
git reset --soft HEAD^
To destroy the changes from the commit you want to undo
git reset --hard HEAD^
You can also say
git reset --soft HEAD~2
to go back 2 commits.
Edit: As charsi mentioned, if you are on Windows you will need to put HEAD or commit hash in quotes.
git reset --soft "HEAD^"
git reset --soft "asdf"
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24
git reset --soft HEAD^ More? More? fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD ': unknown revision or path not in the working tree. Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this: 'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'What the heck? Why does nothing ever just work ingit? I hate it. Commented Jun 27, 2015 at 6:07 -
38@VioletGiraffe you are probably on windows and need to do
git reset --soft "HEAD^"– charsiCommented Aug 17, 2016 at 13:49 -
6Great answer, what I do is create in ~/.gitconfig add [alias] uncommit = reset --soft HEAD^ .... Then I can just write git uncommit and it will soft reset last commit– WoodyDRNCommented Aug 30, 2016 at 9:23
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3Windows tip: if you're too lazy to type in the additional quotes you can also use HEAD~ (e.g. git reset --soft HEAD~) which is exactly the same as "HEAD^" :) Commented Sep 21, 2016 at 1:41
If you want to revert the commit WITHOUT throwing away work, use the --soft flag instead of --hard
git reset --soft HEAD^
Be careful ! reset --hard will remove your local (uncommitted) modifications, too.
git reset --hard HEAD^
note: if you're on windows you'll need to quote the HEAD^ so
git reset --hard "HEAD^"
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4You don't have to quote the carat with the Git bash from msysgit. Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 13:02
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58tried this and just lost days of work here. read below for the
softversion that will retain your work locally.– barclayCommented Mar 26, 2015 at 16:29 -
21Note that this not only undoes the act of committing, but also throws away your changes. Commented May 3, 2015 at 23:25
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12Just as a note for anyone who has made the mistake of running this when they didn't want to discard the changes, your changes are not gone, they have just been hidden. You can undo this operation using
git reset --hard HEAD@{1}to go back to where you just were. (HEAD@{1}means roughly "the commit I was just at 1 change ago", in this case the commit that you told Git you wanted to get rid of. Typegit reflogto see all the recent changes.) Commented Dec 1, 2018 at 1:18 -
2This doesn't remove uncommited modifications, this removes the whole commit with all the changes... Thankfully I could get my changes back using Soren's tip– FabisCommented Jun 18, 2019 at 14:45
Just a note - if you're using ZSH and see the error
zsh: no matches found: HEAD^
You need to escape the ^
git reset --soft HEAD\^
If you commit to the wrong branch
While on the wrong branch:
git log -2gives you hashes of 2 last commits, let's say$prevand$lastgit checkout $prevcheckout correct commitgit checkout -b new-feature-branchcreates a new branch for the featuregit cherry-pick $lastpatches a branch with your changes
Then you can follow one of the methods suggested above to remove your commit from the first branch.
If you haven't pushed your changes yet use git reset --soft [Hash for one commit] to rollback to a specific commit. --soft tells git to keep the changes being rolled back (i.e., mark the files as modified). --hard tells git to delete the changes being rolled back.
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2I've just learned without ruining anything, that subsequent git reset --soft HEAD~ keeps rollin' back without an intervening commit. Fortunately, I push to a bare repository and recovered from that. Good to learn these things the non-destructive, recoverable way. Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 20:37
Be careful with that.
But you can use the rebase command
git rebase -i HEAD~2
A vi will open and all you have to do is delete the line with the commit. Also can read instructions that were shown in proper edition @ vi. A couple of things can be performed on this mode.
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2What is that in Be careful with that? Is it git reset? I would agree. Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 20:38
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The rebase command. You can destroy the commit history with it.– FilipeCommented Aug 6, 2015 at 23:29
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This didn't remove the commit. It removed the changes. I wanted to remove just the commit so I could add the commit to another branch. Commented Jun 23, 2020 at 16:06
git help reset)