Stop retyping the same 12 git commands: a .gitconfig alias starter pack

You type git status roughly forty times a day. That is twelve characters, plus a space, plus Enter. Over a year, by the dubious math of productivity blogs, you have lost entire minutes.

We are going to get those minutes back. Some of them.

The pitch is simple: git lets you define shorthand in your config. You type git st, git hears git status -sb. The savings per use are small. The number of uses is large. That is the entire trick, and it is genuinely worth doing.

The block

Open ~/.gitconfig and paste this under the [alias] heading. If you do not have an [alias] heading, add one — it is just a line that says [alias].

[alias]
    st = status -sb
    co = checkout
    br = branch
    ci = commit
    lg = log --oneline --graph --decorate --all
    last = log -1 HEAD --stat
    unstage = reset HEAD --
    amend = commit --amend --no-edit
    undo = reset --soft HEAD~1
    pushf = push --force-with-lease

What each one buys you

• st → status -sb. The short, branch-aware status. Two letters instead of six, and the -sb output is cleaner anyway. You earned a flag for free.
• co → checkout. Switch branches, restore files. Used constantly. Saves six keystrokes every time, which adds up to a number you will never measure.
• br → branch. List, create, delete branches. The classics.
• ci → commit. From the Subversion days, when “ci” meant check-in. Muscle memory dies hard; lean into it.
• lg → log --oneline --graph --decorate --all. This is the real prize. Nobody types that flag soup from memory. git lg draws the whole branch tree as ASCII art, which is the closest git gets to a hug.
• last → log -1 HEAD --stat. “What did I just do?” Shows your most recent commit and which files it touched. Excellent for the moment right before you push and panic.
• unstage → reset HEAD --. You git add-ed something by accident. git unstage path/to/file puts it back. The name tells you what it does, which is the whole point of a name.
• amend → commit --amend --no-edit. Forgot a file in your last commit? Stage it, run git amend, and it folds into the previous commit without reopening your editor. (Only do this before you push. Amending shared history is how the cautionary tale below starts.)
• undo → reset --soft HEAD~1. Un-commits the last commit but keeps your changes staged. The “wait, no, not yet” button. --soft means your work is safe — nothing is deleted, just un-committed.
• pushf → push --force-with-lease. Read the next section before you ever type this one.

The one that can ruin your afternoon

Here is the part where we leave the failure in, because the failure is the lesson.

The obvious alias to write is pushf = push --force. It works. You rebased your branch, history changed, a normal push gets rejected, and --force shoves your version up regardless. Tidy.

Then a teammate pushed three commits to that same branch while you were rebasing. You did not know. git pushf did exactly what you told it: it forced. Their three commits are now gone from the remote — not in the history, not in the log, just gone. They find out in the afternoon, the hard way.

--force-with-lease is the fix, and it is the only reason pushf is in this list at all. It forces only if the remote is still where you last saw it. If someone pushed in the meantime, git refuses and tells you so. You go investigate instead of bulldozing.

git pushf
# To github.com:you/project.git
#  ! [rejected]  feature -> feature (stale info)
# error: failed to push some refs

That rejection is not the alias failing. That is the alias working. It just saved someone’s afternoon, possibly yours.

Same four keystrokes as --force. Wildly different outcome. Always the lease.

You will know it worked

Save the file. No reload needed — git reads the config fresh each time. Then:

git st

If you see a short, two-line-ish status with your branch name at the top, the aliases are live. If you instead see git: 'st' is not a git command, the block landed in the wrong file or under the wrong heading — check that [alias] is spelled exactly and sits on its own line.

Don’t want to edit the file by hand

Each alias can be set with one command, no text editor:

git config --global alias.st "status -sb"

Repeat per alias, or just paste the block — pasting is faster, which is, after all, the genre we are in here.

The honest accounting

Ten aliases. Best case, each one saves you four to six keystrokes per use. git lg saves more, but you were never going to type that one by hand anyway, so it is less “saved” than “made possible.”

The real total, summed across a year of typing, is a number small enough to be embarrassing. A handful of minutes. Maybe.

That is the joke. It is also the point. You are not doing this to reclaim hours. You are doing it so that git status and git push --force-with-lease stop being friction, so the safe thing is also the easy thing, so muscle memory carries you instead of the keyboard. The minutes are a rounding error. The fewer clobbered branches are the actual win.

Now go type git st forty times. You’ve earned the two letters.