glog

glog — an interactive git log and git show browser.

It is a small, strictly read-only terminal UI for exploring Git history. Git remains responsible for revision parsing, pathspecs, traversal, decorations, and patch generation; glog adds selection, scrolling, search, and Log/Show tabs.

With no arguments, dirty working-tree state appears ahead of HEAD as separate Unstaged changes and Staged changes entries, divided from committed history by a labeled separator. Untracked files are included in the unstaged diff. These synthetic entries are omitted when empty and whenever explicit git log arguments are supplied.

Install and run

Requires Rust 1.80+ and an installed git executable.

cargo build --release
./target/release/glog

Or install from a checkout with cargo install --path ..

Install the glog-tui package from crates.io; the executable is named glog:

cargo install glog-tui

Use glog --help for command-line help and glog --version to print the installed version.

Oh My Zsh

Oh My Zsh's optional git plugin defines glog as an alias for git log --oneline --decorate --graph. A shell alias takes precedence over the installed executable, so affected users may appear to get the old command after installing glog. Check with:

type -a glog

Run glog once without expanding the alias using \glog. To make glog the default permanently, add unalias glog to ~/.zshrc after Oh My Zsh is loaded:

source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh
unalias glog

Restart the shell or run source ~/.zshrc. This also allows glog's Zsh completion adapter to take effect.

Zsh completion

The included completion adapter reuses Zsh's git log completer, including branches, tags, revisions, paths, and Git log options. From a checkout, install it with:

mkdir -p ~/.cargo/share/zsh/site-functions
cp completions/_glog ~/.cargo/share/zsh/site-functions/_glog

Add the completion directory before compinit in ~/.zshrc:

fpath=(~/.cargo/share/zsh/site-functions $fpath)
autoload -Uz compinit
compinit

Restart Zsh or run those three lines in the current shell. glog ma<Tab> should then complete branch names just like git log ma<Tab>.

Arguments are passed through to git log, including revision ranges, traversal options, filters, and pathspecs:

glog
glog A...B
glog --all
glog --first-parent main
glog --since="2 weeks ago"
glog main -- src/

Use watch mode to refresh the default HEAD view when commits, branches, tags, remote-tracking refs, staged changes, unstaged changes, or untracked files change:

glog --watch

For its initial implementation, --watch must be the only argument. Combinations such as glog --watch --all fail with a concise error rather than providing partial watch semantics.

Output-format options such as --format, --pretty, and --oneline are reserved by glog, since its parser requires a machine-readable format.

Keys

The selected Log commit is the one displayed by Show. Show output is loaded lazily and a small cache keeps recently viewed patches.

Common lockfiles (*.lock, package-lock.json, and pnpm-lock.yaml) start folded in Show so source changes remain prominent. The placeholder always shows the file and its added/deleted line counts. Press Enter or z, or click the placeholder, to reveal the complete diff. Searching reveals a folded lockfile automatically when it contains the selected match.

New untracked files also start folded individually, keeping large generated trees navigable while allowing each file to be expanded independently. Their contents are loaded and formatted only when expanded, so repositories with many untracked artifacts still open quickly.

Delta and color

glog automatically tries delta when it is on PATH. Delta is run with paging disabled; if it is absent or fails, ordinary colored git show output is used. ANSI colors from either program are rendered in the TUI.

Set GLOG_DELTA=0 to always use plain Git output:

GLOG_DELTA=0 glog --all

glog never invokes commands that modify repository state.