How to recover a dropped stash in Git?

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Once you know the hash of the stash commit you dropped, you can apply it as a stash:

git stash apply $stash_hash

Or, you can create a separate branch for it with

git branch recovered $stash_hash

After that, you can do whatever you want with all the normal tools. When you’re done, just blow the branch away.

Finding the hash

If you have only just popped it and the terminal is still open, you will still have the hash value printed by git stash pop on screen (thanks, Dolda).

Otherwise, you can find it using this for Linux, Unix or Git Bash for Windows:

git fsck --no-reflog | awk '/dangling commit/ {print $3}'

…or using Powershell for Windows:

git fsck --no-reflog | select-string 'dangling commit' | foreach { $_.ToString().Split(" ")[2] }

This will show you all the commits at the tips of your commit graph which are no longer referenced from any branch or tag – every lost commit, including every stash commit you’ve ever created, will be somewhere in that graph.

The easiest way to find the stash commit you want is probably to pass that list to gitk:

gitk --all $( git fsck --no-reflog | awk '/dangling commit/ {print $3}' )

…or see the answer from emragins if using Powershell for Windows.

This will launch a repository browser showing you every single commit in the repository ever, regardless of whether it is reachable or not.

You can replace gitk there with something like git log --graph --oneline --decorate if you prefer a nice graph on the console over a separate GUI app.

To spot stash commits, look for commit messages of this form:

        WIP on somebranch: commithash Some old commit message

Note: The commit message will only be in this form (starting with “WIP on”) if you did not supply a message when you did git stash.

More Related Contents:

  1. How do I recover a dropped stash in Git?
  2. Move existing, uncommitted work to a new branch in Git
  3. Stash only one file out of multiple files that have changed with Git?
  4. See what’s in a stash without applying it [duplicate]
  5. How can I git stash a specific file?
  6. How to name and retrieve a stash by name in git?
  7. How do you stash an untracked file?
  8. Can “git pull” automatically stash and pop pending changes?
  9. Recovering added/staged file after doing git reset –hard HEAD^?
  10. How to recover from “git stash save –all”?
  11. How do I properly git stash/pop in pre-commit hooks to get a clean working tree for tests?
  12. How do I ignore an error on ‘git pull’ about my local changes would be overwritten by merge?
  13. Is it possible to push a git stash to a remote repository?
  14. git stash and apply
  15. How do I stash only one file out of multiple files that have changed?
  16. Is it possible to get commit logs/messages of a remote git repo without git clone
  17. How would I extract a single file (or changes to a file) from a git stash?
  18. Difference between git stash pop and git stash apply
  19. How to recover stashed uncommitted changes
  20. How do I name and retrieve a Git stash by name?
  21. Git: Create a branch from unstaged/uncommitted changes on master
  22. How to reverse apply a stash?
  23. Stash changes to specific files
  24. Is there a way with to prevent “git stash pop” from marking files as modified?
  25. Why does git stash pop say that it could not restore untracked files from stash entry?
  26. How do I preview stash contents in Git?
  27. How can I rename a git stash?
  28. What’s the difference between git stash save and git stash push?
  29. How do you restore a corrupted object in a git repository (for newbies)?
  30. automatically stash save/pop changes on git rebase?

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