Agreed, with the caveat that a tangled commit history can be overwhelming to a beginner. Probably the only time I really want to recommend a Git GUI is for visu

Agreed, with the caveat that a tangled commit history can be overwhelming to a beginner. Probably the only time I really want to recommend a Git GUI is for visualizing the commit graph. I think GitUp does a really good job of making it navigable and understandable, but is unfortunately Mac-only: https://gitup.co/ https://gitup.co/ If you're interested, here's my version of this: [alias] ## Pretty log graph log-oneline = log --decorate=short --date='format-local:%a %F %H:%M' --pretty='tformat:%C(auto)%h%C(reset) %C(auto,blue)[%ad]%C(reset)%C(auto)%d%C(reset) %aN: %s' log-graph = log-oneline --topo-order --graph reflog-oneline = log-oneline --walk-reflogs lg = log-graph lgl = log-graph --branches --tags lgr = log-graph --branches --tags --remotes lga = log-graph --all For anyone who doesn't want to dig around in the git-log(1) man page, the relevant format placeholder are: %C(col) Change color to "col" %h Abbreviated commit hash %ad Author date (formatted as per --date) %d Ref name (like with --decorate) %aN Author name %s "Subject" (first line of commit message) The difference with the usual `--decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit` options is that my version includes the date and author name, which can be really helpful when navigating a long commit history and/or a project with multiple contributors. Without it, I often found myself wondering "who did that, and when did they do it?". The --topo-order option also helps here.