Searching Git History in Fork.app

I recently discovered a fantastic feature in Fork.app while trying to recover some previously deleted files. Fork is an amazing Git client available on macOS and Windows. It’s very reasonably priced at just $59.99 forever, and that includes all features. If you work with Git regularly, it’s well worth purchasing a license!

How to Search Git History in Fork

If you need to find an old file, piece of code, or even an image that was committed in the past but has since been removed, Fork makes it incredibly simple. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Open Fork and navigate to your repository.
2. In the navigation pane, click on the Search tab (the magnifying glass icon).

   

3. Change the filter type to “Diff content”.
4. Enter your search term.

   

5. Fork will search through all diffs in the repository and display each commit that contains your search term.

   

For example, I was searching for images related to a blog post titled “Startup Essentials.” I used the search term “essentials” and Fork quickly found old markdown files and several commits related to the post—including the original image!

Recovering Deleted Files

Once you locate the commit containing the file you need, Fork makes it super easy to restore it:

1. Click on the file in the search results.
2. Click the down arrow next to the image details.
3. Select “Save As” to download that version of the file.

   

And just like that, the image (or any file) is restored!

Why Fork?

While there are other ways to search through Git history using the command line (such as git bisect), I find UI tools like Fork much, much easier to use. If you’re not already using Fork, I highly recommend giving it a try!

Photo by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash