git reflog: undo almost anything

·cheatly.dev
gitlazygit

You just ran git reset --hard and your commits are gone. Or you did a rebase and everything went sideways. Or you deleted a branch with work on it. The standard git log shows nothing — those commits have vanished.

Except they haven't. Git never truly deletes commits. The reflog records every position your HEAD has been in — every commit, reset, rebase, checkout, merge. It's your time machine.

See where you've been

Reflog Basics
git reflog
Show the full reflog — every HEAD position
git reflog show main
Reflog for a specific branch
git reflog --date=relative
Show with timestamps instead of index numbers

The output looks like this:

a1b2c3d HEAD@{0}: reset: moving to HEAD~3
f4e5d6a HEAD@{1}: commit: add user authentication
b7c8d9e HEAD@{2}: commit: fix login redirect

Each line is a snapshot. HEAD@{1} is where you were one action ago. The commit hashes on the left are still valid — the commits still exist in git's object store.

Recovering from common disasters

Undoing a git reset --hard:

git reflog                    # find the commit before the reset
git reset --hard HEAD@{1}     # go back to it

Recovering a deleted branch:

git reflog                    # find the last commit on that branch
git checkout -b recovered HEAD@{4}   # recreate the branch at that point

Undoing a bad rebase:

git reflog                    # find the commit before the rebase started
git reset --hard HEAD@{5}     # jump back to pre-rebase state
The reflog is local only — it's not shared with remotes. If you need to recover something, do it on the machine where the work happened. Reflog entries expire after 90 days by default.

The mental model

Think of the reflog as an undo history for git itself. git log shows your project's history. git reflog shows your history — every action you took, in order, with the ability to jump back to any point.

In lazygit, press z to undo — it uses the reflog under the hood. Same concept, visual interface.

For the full reference, see our git cheatsheet and git rebase guide.