↓ Skip to main content

Rewriting your email in git commits

25 January 2014·147 words·1 min

Author

Kostiantyn Lysenko

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Sometimes you need to rewrite your email across all commits in a git repository.

Note (2026): This post originally used git filter-branch, which has been deprecated since Git 2.24. The modern equivalent is git filter-repo. The filter-branch command below still works but is no longer recommended.

With git filter-branch (deprecated)
#

git filter-branch --env-filter '
  if [ $GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL = bad@email ]; then
    GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL=correct@email
  fi
  export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL
'

Modern equivalent: git-filter-repo
#

pip install git-filter-repo
git filter-repo --email-callback '
  return email if email != b"bad@email" else b"correct@email"
'

For collaborators
#

After a history rewrite, collaborators need to react. Per Jakub Narębski:

If they didn’t base any work on pre-rewrite history: git reset --hard origin/master or git pull origin (fast-forward).
If they did base work on it: git rebase origin/master or git pull --rebase origin.

References
#