git-graph

April 12, 2026 · View on GitHub

An out-of-the-box pretty git log --graph.

readme.png

Features

  • Lightweight: Only depends on standard Unix tools.
  • Smart defaults: Colorful, readable graph — no configuration needed.
  • Flexible: Use (almost) any git log option.
  • Autocompletion: Uses git log completions.

Requirements

  • Git
  • Awk
  • Cat
  • tput (optional)

Usage

git-graph

gg
AliasDescription
ggShow a graph of the current branch.
ggaShow a graph of all branches.
ggsPrint the last 20 commits across all branches.
ggbVisualize last common commit of diverging branches using git merge-base

Configuration

Customize the output using the following environment variables.

Environment variableDescriptionTypeDefault value
GIT_GRAPH_WIDTHOverall output widthnumberComputed with tput
GIT_GRAPH_AUTHOR_WIDTHWidth for the "author" columnnumber12
GIT_GRAPH_DATE_WIDTHWidth for the "date" columnnumber12
GIT_GRAPH_DATE_FORMATDate format using git's --date syntax.stringrelative

Examples

gga --max-count=100 | cat

Visualize merge-base of HEAD and develop branch

ggb develop HEAD

ggb.png

Custom date format

GIT_GRAPH_DATE_FORMAT=iso GIT_GRAPH_DATE_WIDTH=25 git-graph

GIT_GRAPH_DATE_FORMAT='format:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M' GIT_GRAPH_DATE_WIDTH=16 git-graph

Use (almost) any git log option

gga --since='1 month' --date-order

gga -G 'secret'

Installation

Oh My Zsh

  1. Clone the repository into your oh-my-zsh custom plugins directory:
git clone "https://github.com/Maks0u/git-graph.git" "${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/git-graph"
  1. Add git-graph to your list of plugins in your .zshrc file:
plugins=(... git-graph ...)

Manual install

You can use the script on its own without installing it as a zsh plugin.

curl --location https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Maks0u/git-graph/refs/heads/main/git-graph.sh --output /usr/local/bin/git-graph
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/git-graph

You'll have to manually define aliases:

alias gg='git-graph'
alias gga='git-graph --all'
alias ggs='git-graph --all --max-count=20 | cat'

Roadmap

  • Use HEAD as default when providing a single argument to ggb
  • Column customization
    • Column widths
    • Toggle columns
  • Date format customization
  • Two lines format
  • Fix format when using --stat, --compact-summary, etc.

License

MIT

Inspirations