1467

How can I uncommit my last commit in git?

Is it

git reset --hard HEAD

or

git reset --hard HEAD^

?

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4
  • 5
    For git I find that the man page is often the best reference (or alternatively, git help reset) Commented May 16, 2010 at 22:30
  • Please check here stackoverflow.com/a/49130829/7178104 Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 12:44
  • 5
    git reset --soft HEAD~1 will reset only last git commit, not reset your files changes Commented Jul 7, 2019 at 7:13
  • If this happens to be your first commit, try stackoverflow.com/questions/10911317/… Commented Dec 13, 2020 at 21:59

8 Answers 8

Reset to default
2385

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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14 Comments

@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.
@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.
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.
Note for zsh users: use git reset 'HEAD^'
What 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>...]'
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688

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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5 Comments

When I put: git reset --soft HEAD^ Git says me More? What it means?
@FernandoPie Did you find the ans?
I can't remember budy, but what iss the problem?
That's probably because your CLI interprets the "^" differently. Perhaps try put "HEAD^" in quotes?
Tips: Use the slash to escape the ^, if u got error like zsh: no matches found: HEAD^. i.e., git reset --soft HEAD\^.
411

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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4 Comments

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 in git? I hate it.
@VioletGiraffe you are probably on windows and need to do git reset --soft "HEAD^"
Great 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
Windows 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^" :)
195

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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10 Comments

You don't have to quote the carat with the Git bash from msysgit.
tried this and just lost days of work here. read below for the soft version that will retain your work locally.
Note that this not only undoes the act of committing, but also throws away your changes.
Just 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. Type git reflog to see all the recent changes.)
This 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
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48

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\^
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Comments

34

If you commit to the wrong branch

While on the wrong branch:

  1. git log -2 gives you hashes of 2 last commits, let's say $prev and $last
  2. git checkout $prev checkout correct commit
  3. git checkout -b new-feature-branch creates a new branch for the feature
  4. git cherry-pick $last patches a branch with your changes

Then you can follow one of the methods suggested above to remove your commit from the first branch.

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Comments

22

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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1 Comment

I'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.
6

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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3 Comments

What is that in Be careful with that? Is it git reset? I would agree.
The rebase command. You can destroy the commit history with it.
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.

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