How to change the commit author for a single commit?

Question

I want to change the author of one specific commit in the history. It's not the latest commit.

Related: How do I change the author and committer name/email for multiple commits?

Answer 1

Interactive rebase off of a point earlier in the history than the commit you need to modify (git rebase -i <earliercommit>). In the list of commits being rebased, change the text from pick to edit next to the hash of the one you want to modify. Then when git prompts you to change the commit, use this:

git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>" --no-edit

---

For example, if your commit history is A-B-C-D-E-F with F as HEAD, and you want to change the author of C and D, then you would...

1. Specify git rebase -i B (here is an example of what you will see after executing the git rebase -i B command)
   • if you need to edit A, use git rebase -i --root
2. Change the lines for both C and D from pick to edit
3. Exit the editor (for vim, this would be pressing Esc and then typing :wq).
4. Once the rebase started, it would first pause at C
5. You would git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"
6. Then git rebase --continue
7. It would pause again at D
8. Then you would git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>" again
9. git rebase --continue
10. The rebase would complete.
11. Use git push -f to update your origin with the updated commits.

Answer 2

The accepted answer to this question is a wonderfully clever use of interactive rebase, but it unfortunately exhibits conflicts if the commit we are trying to change the author of used to be on a branch which was subsequently merged in. More generally, it does not work when handling messy histories.

Since I am apprehensive about running scripts which depend on setting and unsetting environment variables to rewrite git history, I am writing a new answer based on this post which is similar to this answer but is more complete.

The following is tested and working, unlike the linked answer. Assume for clarity of exposition that 03f482d6 is the commit whose author we are trying to replace, and 42627abe is the commit with the new author.

1. Checkout the commit we are trying to modify:

    git checkout 03f482d6
   

2. Make the author change:

    git commit --amend --author "New Author Name <New Author Email>"
   

   Now we have a new commit with hash assumed to be 42627abe.

3. Checkout the original branch.

4. Replace the old commit with the new one locally:

    git replace 03f482d6 42627abe
   

5. Rewrite all future commits based on the replacement:

    git filter-branch -- --all
   

6. Remove the replacement for cleanliness:

    git replace -d 03f482d6
   

7. Push the new history:

    git push --force-with-lease
   

   (Only use --force instead of --force-with-lease if the latter fails, and only after sanity checking with git log and/or git diff.)

Instead of steps 4–5 you can just rebase onto the new commit:

git rebase -i 42627abe

Answer 3

Github documentation contains a script that replaces the committer info for all commits in a branch (now irretrievable, this is the last snapshot).

Run the following script from terminal after changing the variable values

#!/bin/sh
 
git filter-branch --env-filter '
 
OLD_EMAIL="your-old-email@example.com"
CORRECT_NAME="Your Correct Name"
CORRECT_EMAIL="your-correct-email@example.com"

if [ "$GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL" = "$OLD_EMAIL" ]
then
    export GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="$CORRECT_NAME"
    export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="$CORRECT_EMAIL"
fi
if [ "$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL" = "$OLD_EMAIL" ]
then
    export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="$CORRECT_NAME"
    export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="$CORRECT_EMAIL"
fi
' --tag-name-filter cat -- --branches --tags

Push the corrected history to GitHub:

git push --force --tags origin 'refs/heads/*'

OR if you like to push selected references of the branches then use

git push --force --tags origin 'refs/heads/develop'

Answer 4

If you just want to change the author of your last commit, you can do this:

• Reset your email to the config globally:

  git config --global user.email example@email.com

• Now reset the author of your commit without edit required:

  git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit

Note this will also change the author timestamp.

Answer 5

You can change author of last commit using the command below.

git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"

However, if you want to change more than one commits author name, it's a bit tricky. You need to start an interactive rebase then mark commits as edit then amend them one by one and finish.

1. Start rebasing with git rebase -i.

2. Change the pick keyword to edit for the commits you want to change the author name.

3. Then close the editor. For the beginners, hit Escape then type :wq and hit Enter.

Then you will see your terminal like nothing happened. Actually you are in the middle of an interactive rebase. Now it's time to amend your commit's author name using the command above. It will open the editor again. Quit and continue rebase with git rebase --continue. Repeat the same for the commit count you want to edit. You can make sure that interactive rebase finished when you get the No rebase in progress? message.

Answer 6

The answers in the question to which you linked are good answers and cover your situation (the other question is more general since it involves rewriting multiple commits).

As an excuse to try out git filter-branch, I wrote a script to rewrite the Author Name and/or Author Email for a given commit:

#!/bin/sh

#
# Change the author name and/or email of a single commit.
#
# change-author [-f] commit-to-change [branch-to-rewrite [new-name [new-email]]]
#
#     If -f is supplied it is passed to "git filter-branch".
#
#     If <branch-to-rewrite> is not provided or is empty HEAD will be used.
#     Use "--all" or a space separated list (e.g. "master next") to rewrite
#     multiple branches.
#
#     If <new-name> (or <new-email>) is not provided or is empty, the normal
#     user.name (user.email) Git configuration value will be used.
#

force=''
if test "x$1" = "x-f"; then
    force='-f'
    shift
fi

die() {
    printf '%s\n' "$@"
    exit 128
}
targ="$(git rev-parse --verify "$1" 2>/dev/null)" || die "$1 is not a commit"
br="${2:-HEAD}"

TARG_COMMIT="$targ"
TARG_NAME="${3-}"
TARG_EMAIL="${4-}"
export TARG_COMMIT TARG_NAME TARG_EMAIL

filt='

    if test "$GIT_COMMIT" = "$TARG_COMMIT"; then
        if test -n "$TARG_EMAIL"; then
            GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="$TARG_EMAIL"
            export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL
        else
            unset GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL
        fi
        if test -n "$TARG_NAME"; then
            GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="$TARG_NAME"
            export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME
        else
            unset GIT_AUTHOR_NAME
        fi
    fi

'

git filter-branch $force --env-filter "$filt" -- $br

Answer 7

My 2019's comment converted into an answer:

To fix authoring on the last six commits

1. First set the correct author for current Git repo

   git config --local user.name "FirstName LastName"
   git config --local user.email first.last@example.com
   

2. Then apply the fix to the last six commits

   git rebase --onto HEAD~6 --exec "git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit" HEAD~6
   

3. Finally force push to the remote Git repo

   git push --force-with-lease
   

Answer 8

Find a way that can change user quickly and has no side effect to others commits.

Simple and clear way:

git config user.name "New User"
git config user.email "newuser@gmail.com"

git log
git rebase -i 1f1357
# change the word 'pick' to 'edit', save and exit

git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit
git rebase --continue

git push --force-with-lease

detailed operations

• show commit logs and find out the commit id that ahead of your commit which you want to change:

git log

• git rebase start from the chosed commit id to the recent reversely:

git config user.name "New User"
git config user.email "newuser@gmail.com"
git rebase -i 1f1357

# change word pick to edit, save and exit
edit 809b8f7 change code order 
pick 9baaae5 add prometheus monitor kubernetes
edit 5d726c3 fix liquid escape issue   
edit 3a5f98f update tags
pick 816e21c add prometheus monitor kubernetes

• rebase will Stopped at next commit id, output:

Stopped at 809b8f7...  change code order 
You can amend the commit now, with
  git commit --amend 

Once you are satisfied with your changes, run

  git rebase --continue

• comfirm and continue your rebase untill it successfully to refs/heads/master.

# each continue will show you an amend message
# use git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit to comfirm
# use git rebase --skip to skip
git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit
git rebase --continue
git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit
...
git rebase --continue
Successfully rebased and updated refs/heads/master.

• git push to update

git push --force-with-lease

Answer 9

Commit before:

To fix author for all commits you can apply command from @Amber's answer:

git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"

Or to reuse your name and email you can just write:

git commit --amend --author=Eugen

Commit after the command:

For example to change all starting from 4025621:

You must run:

git rebase --onto 4025621 --exec "git commit --amend --author=Eugen" 4025621

Note: To include an author containing spaces such as a name and email address, the author must be surrounded by escaped quotes. For example:

git rebase --onto 4025621 --exec "git commit --amend --author=\"Foo Bar <foo@bar.com>\"" 4025621

or add this alias into ~/.gitconfig:

[alias]
    reauthor = !bash -c 'git rebase --onto $1 --exec \"git commit --amend --author=$2\" $1' --

And then run:

git reauthor 4025621 Eugen

Answer 10

In furtherance to Eugen Konkov answer, to start from the root commit, use --root flag. The --no-edit flag is helpful too, because with it you are not prompted into an editor for each commit.

git rebase --root --exec "git commit --amend --author='name <email>' --no-edit"

Answer 11

When doing git rebase -i there is this interesting bit in the doc:

If you want to fold two or more commits into one, replace the command "pick" for the second and subsequent commits with "squash" or "fixup". If the commits had different authors, the folded commit will be attributed to the author of the first commit. The suggested commit message for the folded commit is the concatenation of the commit messages of the first commit and of those with the "squash" command, but omits the commit messages of commits with the "fixup" command.

• If you have an history of A-B-C-D-E-F,
• and you want to change commits B and D (= 2 commits),

then you can do:

• git config user.name "Correct new name"
• git config user.email "correct@new.email"
• create empty commits (one for each commit):
  • you need a message for rebase purpose
  • git commit --allow-empty -m "empty"
• start the rebase operation
  • git rebase -i B^
  • B^ selects the parent of B.
• you will want to put one empty commit before each commit to modify
• you will want to change pick to squash for those.

Example of what git rebase -i B^ will give you:

pick sha-commit-B some message
pick sha-commit-C some message
pick sha-commit-D some message
pick sha-commit-E some message
pick sha-commit-F some message
# pick sha-commit-empty1 empty
# pick sha-commit-empty2 empty

change that to:

# change commit B's author
pick sha-commit-empty1 empty
squash sha-commit-B some message
# leave commit C alone
pick sha-commit-C some message
# change commit D's author
pick sha-commit-empty2 empty
squash sha-commit-D some message
# leave commit E-F alone
pick sha-commit-E some message
pick sha-commit-F some message

It will prompt you to edit the messages:

# This is a combination of 2 commits.
# The first commit's message is:

empty

# This is the 2nd commit message:

...some useful commit message there...

and you can just remove the first few lines.

Answer 12

There is one additional step to Amber's answer if you're using a centralized repository:

git push -f to force the update of the central repository.

Be careful that there are not a lot of people working on the same branch because it can ruin consistency.

Answer 13

If the commit that you want to change is not the last commit, then follow the below steps. If your commit is in different branch then first switch to that branch.

git checkout branch_name

Find commit before the commit that you want to change and find its hash. Then issue rebase command.

git rebase -i -p hash of commit

Then an editor will open and enter 'edit' for the commits that you want to change. Leave others with default 'pick' option. Once changed enter 'esc' key and wq! to exit.

Then issue git commit command with amendment option.

git commit --amend --author="Username email" --no-edit

Then issue the following command.

git rebase --continue

Once commit author is updated in the local repository, push the changes to the remote repository.

Answer 14

SOLUTION

1. Install git filter-repo (Git project recommends filter-repo over filter-branch)

   $ PACKAGE_TOOL install git-filter-repo
   

2. Create a file .mailmap in the root of the git repository containing

   New Name <new@ema.il> <old@ema.il>
   

3. Run git filter-repo --use-mailmap

---

MORE DETAILS

• git-filter-repo lists this as an example in their docs
• Instead of replacing both the name and the email like in the example above, take a look at additional examples in git mailmap documentation
• Instead of using a file named .mailmap by default, you can specify mailmap file by invoking git filter-repo with argument --mailmap <filename>.
• Many more examples on how to further filter branch/tag/whatever can be found in the git-filter-repo project's README.md.

Answer 15

For the merge commit message, I found that I cannot amend it by using rebase, at least on gitlab. It shows the merge as a commit but I cannot rebase onto that #sha. I found this post is helpful.

git checkout <sha of merge>
git commit --amend # edit message
git rebase HEAD previous_branch

This three lines of code did the job for changing the merge commit message (like author).

Answer 16

Using Interactive Rebase

git rebase -i -p <some HEAD before all of your bad commits>

Then mark all of your bad commits as "edit" in the rebase file, and when git asks you to amend each commit, do

git commit --amend --author "New Author Name <email@address.com>"

edit or just close the editor that opens, and then do

git rebase --continue

to continue the rebase.

You could skip opening the editor altogether here by appending --no-edit so that the command will be:

git commit --amend --author "New Author Name <email@address.com>" --no-edit && \
git rebase --continue

Single Commit

As some of the commenters have noted, if you just want to change the most recent commit, the rebase command is not necessary. Just do

git commit --amend --author "New Author Name <email@address.com>"

This will change the author to the name specified, but the committer will be set to your configured user in git config user.name and git config user.email. If you want to set the committer to something you specify, this will set both the author and the committer:

git -c user.name="New Author Name" -c user.email=email@address.com commit --amend --reset-author

Answer 17

Steps to rename author name after commit pushed

1. First type "git log" to get the commit id and more details

2. git rebase i HEAD~10 (10 is the total commit to display on rebase)

   If you Get anything like below

   fatal: It seems that there is already a rebase-merge directory, and I wonder if you are in the middle of another rebase. If that is the case, please try

   git rebase (--continue | --abort | --skip) If that is not the case, please rm -fr ".git/rebase-merge" and run me again. I am stopping in case you still have something valuable there.

3. Then type "git rebase --continue" or "git rebase --abort" as per your need

   • now your will rebase window opened, click "i" key from keyboard
   • then you will get list of commits to 10 [because we have passed 10 commit above] Like below

   pick 897fe9e simplify code a little

   pick abb60f9 add new feature

   pick dc18f70 bugfix

4. Now you need to add below command just below of the commit you want to edit, like below

   pick 897fe9e simplify code a little exec git commit --amend --author 'Author Name <author.name@mail.com>' pick abb60f9 add new feature exec git commit --amend --author 'Author Name <author.name@mail.com>' pick dc18f70 bugfix exec git commit --amend --author 'Author Name <author.name@mail.com>'

   5. That's it, now just press ESC, :wq and you are all set

   6. Then git push origin HEAD:BRANCH NAME -f [please take care of -f Force push]

   like git push -f or git push origin HEAD: dev -f

Answer 18

OPTIONAL: Make sure to stash your local changes if you don't want to send them to remote.

$ git status
$ git stash

Update the author for the last commit.

$ git log   // Old author in local and remote
$ git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"
$ git log   // New Author in local
$ git push origin <branch> --force-with-lease 
$ git log   // New Author in remote

Then, if you used git stash then recovers your staged changes

$ git stash pop
$ git status

---

Then, you should to update the configuration for the next commits of the current project.

$ git config user.name "Author Name"
$ git config user.email "<email@address.com>"

And check or also edit this with git config --edit

---

Clarification: In the rare case that you lose commits using $ ggpush -f you can recover them with reflog. Anyway using --force-with-lease you are protected even more than if you use only -f

GL

• Source
• ZSH

Answer 19

It could happen if you're missing settings on your machine, e.g., after a format, or when not having a Git configured correctly without setting up (correctly) these commands.

git config user.name "Author Name"
git config user.email "<email@address.com>"

Why not make your life simpler by following this article by Atlassian?

1. git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"
2. Unprotect your branch, if it's protected. In this example, it's master; therefore, it'll be protected by the source code repository
3. git push origin master --force

That's the simplest scenario for the last commit. For picking up any "random" commit, you need:

1. git rebase -i <Earlier Commit>.
2. Change pick on edit on that commit, in which you're interested in
3. git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"
4. Unprotect your branch if it's protected. In this example, it's master; therefore, it'll be protected by the source code repository
5. git push origin master --force

You can always git log in between to be sure where you are before you push.

Answer 20

There is a shortcut applicable to the most voted question: using exec instead of edit.

exec allows to run a command on a specified commit.
Using it allows to avoid using edit, exiting to a terminal and running the git command for each git commit.
This is especially helpful if you have to change multiple commits in the history.

The steps are:

1. perform a rebase to an earlier commit (git rebase -i <earliercommit>)
2. in the editor that opens up, add a line after each commit line you want to edit and add exec git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>" --no-edit (or using --reset-author if you want to reset to the value set in the git config)
3. save and exit - this will run the specified command for each commit, effectively changing the author

Example editor content (to change first 2 commits author):

pick 1fc6c95 Patch A
exec git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>" --no-edit
pick 6b2481b Patch B
exec git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>" --no-edit
pick dd1475d something I want to split
pick c619268 A fix for Patch B
pick fa39187 something to add to patch A
pick 4ca2acc i cant' typ goods
pick 7b36971 something to move before patch B

# Rebase 41a72e6..7b36971 onto 41a72e6
#
# Commands:
#  p, pick = use commit
#  r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message
#  e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending
#  s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit
#  f, fixup = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message
#  x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell
#
# If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST.
# However, if you remove everything, the rebase will be aborted.
#

Answer 21

As an addition to Eugen Konkov's answer, it is possible to keep the commit/author date. To only modify the author but not the date of the last three commits use

git rebase --onto HEAD~3 --exec 'GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$(git log -n 1 --format=%aD)" git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit --date="$(git log -n 1 --format=%aD)"' HEAD~3

then apply a force push

git push --force-with-lease

Answer 22

you can use these commands from official page of github

https://help.github.com/en/github/using-git/changing-author-info

here is the commands

#!/bin/sh

git filter-branch --env-filter '

OLD_EMAIL="your-old-email@example.com"
CORRECT_NAME="Your Correct Name"
CORRECT_EMAIL="your-correct-email@example.com"

if [ "$GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL" = "$OLD_EMAIL" ]
then
export GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="$CORRECT_NAME"
export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="$CORRECT_EMAIL"
fi
if [ "$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL" = "$OLD_EMAIL" ]
then
export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="$CORRECT_NAME"
export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="$CORRECT_EMAIL"
fi
' --tag-name-filter cat -- --branches --tags

here u can change the old email to ur new user name and email address.

Answer 23

One important thing to mention especially if you are deleting author information for privacy.

After operations from upper answers:

git commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"
git push -f

The commits with old author info still exist in git local & remote cache.

As Github you can still access the commit by SHA1, with a warning "This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository."

Garbage collect can be executed within local repo:

git gc

Howerver for Github, which you cannot trigger this command, go to Support https://support.github.com/request/remove-data and submit Clear Cached Views ticket on your repo.

This last step is applied to all commit modify/remove operations.

Ref: https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository#fully-removing-the-data-from-github

Warning: This article tells you how to make commits with sensitive data unreachable from any branches or tags in your repository on GitHub.com. However, those commits may still be accessible in any clones or forks of your repository, directly via their SHA-1 hashes in cached views on GitHub, and through any pull requests that reference them. You cannot remove sensitive data from other users' clones of your repository, but you can permanently remove cached views and references to the sensitive data in pull requests on GitHub by contacting GitHub Support.

Answer 24

There is also a lazy approach to this problem, especially if you have more than one commit that you want to change. In my case, I had a new branch with several commits with a wrong author, so what helped me:

Go to your original branch:

git checkout develop

Create new branch from it:

git checkout -b myFeature develop 

Merge it without commit info as one commit:

git merge --no-commit --squash branchWrongAuthor

You might also want to stage changes:

git stage .

Change the name of the author and commit changes:

git commit --amend --author "New Author Name <New Author Email>" -m "new feature added"

And that's it, you can push the changes.

git push

You can delete the branch with a wrong author after that.

Answer 25

Changing Your Committer Name & Email Globally:

$ git config --global user.name "John Doe"
$ git config --global user.email "john@doe.org"

Changing Your Committer Name & Email per Repository:

$ git config user.name "John Doe"
$ git config user.email "john@doe.org"

Changing the Author Information Just for the Next Commit:

$ git commit --author="John Doe <john@doe.org>"

Hint: For other situation and read more information read the post reference.

Answer 26

The preferred answer, the one using git rebase -i is efficient, but as highlighted in this other answer, it becomes messy when there are merges around the commits to edit. And the use of git replace is smart but git filter-branch rewrites all the history of other branches and tags, which is not what we want in general.

I wanted to share an alternative to the first answer that remains easy even when there are merges. In my case, when I used git rebase -i <earlier-commit>, I got a conflict to solve first, before proceeding with the rebase. In fact, it is easier to use the break command rather than the edit one. And directly rebase on the commit we target.

Let's take an example and let's assume git log shows...

commit a12afg
...
commit dloe7a
...
commit gh7ag1
...   
commit qp3zaa
...

And let's say you want to update the author, message or commit signature for the commit gh7ag1. You can proceed with git rebase -i gh7ag1. In you editor, you will see:

pick dloe7a
pick a12afg

Just add a break command:

break
pick dloe7a
pick a12afg

Save (:wq with VI, Ctrl+O then Ctrl+X with nano). And now, you are back right after your commit. You can run git commit --amend to update the author, the message or the signature (e.g. git commit --amend -S --author="Your Name <your-email>"). Verify with git log --show-signature. If correct, you can go on with git rebase --continue.

And you can have as many break commands in the rebase. The continue will move to the next break, if there is one, or apply the remaining commits (provided they are marked as pick).

Answer 27

If what you need to change is the AUTHOR OF THE LAST commit and no other is using your repository, you may undo your last commit with:

git push -f origin last_commit_hash:branch_name 

change the author name of your commit with:

git commit --amend --author "type new author here"

Exit the editor that opens and push again your code:

git push