Git has a built-in recovery log. Reflog shows every place HEAD has been, even across branches. Use it to jump back to a point before things broke.

git reflog
# find the entry before everything went wrong
git reset HEAD@{index}

Use reflog to recover deleted commits, undo bad merges, or roll back experiments. It is the closest thing Git has to a magic undo.

You committed, then realized you need one tiny fix. Amend the last commit. Do not amend commits that are already pushed to shared branches.

# make your change
git add .
git commit --amend --no-edit

Warning: only amend local commits. Amending published history will break other clones.

Fix a messy message without changing the content.

git commit --amend
# edit the message in your editor

Move the commit to a new branch, then reset the original branch.

# create a new branch from the current state
git branch fix-this-branch
# remove the last commit from the current branch
git reset HEAD~ --hard
git checkout fix-this-branch

If you already pushed, use a safer strategy like revert instead of rewriting history.

Undo the commit locally, stash changes, then apply them on the correct branch.

git reset HEAD~ --soft
git stash
git checkout correct-branch
git stash pop
git add .
git commit -m "your message here"

Alternative: use cherry-pick to move the commit, then reset the old branch.

git checkout correct-branch
git cherry-pick main
git checkout main
git reset HEAD~ --hard

If you already staged files, regular diff will be empty. Use the staged diff.

git diff --staged

Revert creates a new commit that reverses a past commit without rewriting history.

git log
git revert <commit-hash>

Restore one file from a previous commit without touching the rest of the repo.

git log -- path/to/file
git checkout <commit-hash> -- path/to/file
git commit -m "restore file"

Destructive reset to match the remote state. This will delete local changes and untracked files. Use with extreme caution.

git fetch origin
git checkout main
git reset --hard origin/main
git clean -d --force