GitEverywhere
GitEverywhere is a VSCode extension that lets you search your entire git history — not just the current branch, but branches, reflog, stash entries, dangling commits, dangling blobs, FETCH_HEAD, git notes, special heads (ORIG_HEAD, MERGE_HEAD, CHERRY_PICK_HEAD), and worktree heads — all from a single sidebar panel with live-streaming results.
Scan Depths
| Depth |
What is scanned |
Typical speed |
| Fast |
All reachable commits (branches), reflog, stash |
Seconds |
| Deep |
Everything in Fast, plus dangling objects (fsck), FETCH_HEAD, git notes, special heads, worktree heads |
10–30 seconds |
| Full |
Everything in Deep, plus the entire object store (all loose objects and pack files) |
Slow on large repos — prompted with a warning if the repo has over 100,000 objects |
Search Modes
| Mode |
What it searches |
| Content |
Searches the diff content of every commit (uses git log -S) — finds commits that added or removed the string |
| Commit message |
Searches commit messages (uses git log --grep) |
| Filename / path |
Searches file paths recorded in each commit's tree — useful for finding when a file existed or was renamed |
How to Use
- Open the GitEverywhere panel in the Activity Bar (look for the git-branch icon).
- Click the Search Git History button (magnifying glass) in the panel toolbar, or run the command
GitEverywhere: Search Git History from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).
- Choose a search mode: Content, Commit message, or Filename / path.
- Type your search query and press Enter.
- Choose a scan depth: Fast, Deep, or Full.
- Results stream into the sidebar in real time, grouped by source (reachable, reflog, stash, etc.).
- Click any result to open the Commit Detail panel, which shows full metadata, branch information, and matched files.
From the Commit Detail panel you can:
- Checkout to new branch — creates a new branch at the selected commit and switches to it
- Cherry-pick — applies the commit's changes to the current branch
- Restore file — restores a specific file from the commit into the working tree
- Copy SHA — copies the full commit SHA to the clipboard (also available via right-click in the sidebar)
- Show in terminal — opens the integrated terminal with the commit SHA pre-filled
FAQ
Nothing found?
Try a deeper scan depth. Fast only scans reachable commits; Deep adds dangling objects and special refs; Full scans everything. Also check your query — Content search is case-sensitive by default (same as git log -S).
Why are some results shown with a warning icon?
Results from non-reachable sources (reflog, stash, dangling commits) are highlighted with a warning icon because they may be garbage-collected by git at any time (git gc). Consider creating a branch to preserve important ones.
Full scan is taking too long.
Cancel the search with the stop-circle button in the toolbar, then try Deep depth instead. Full scan walks every object in the repository and can be slow on repos with millions of objects.
WSL / Windows path issues?
GitEverywhere normalizes paths returned by git rev-parse --show-toplevel using path.normalize(), which handles both forward-slash (POSIX/WSL) and backslash (Windows) separators correctly.
Contributions welcome — GitHub repo coming soon.
