How to recover a dropped stash in Git

Question

I frequently use git stash and git stash pop to save and restore changes in my working tree  Yesterday I had some changes in my working tree that I had stashed and popped  and then I made more changes to my working tree  I d like to go back and review yesterday s stashed changes  but git stash pop appears to remove all references to the associated commit   I know that if I use git stash then  git refs stash contains the reference of the commit used to create the stash  And  git logs refs stash contains the whole stash  But those references are gone after git stash pop  I know that the commit is still in my repository somewhere  but I don t know what it was   Is there an easy way to recover yesterday s stash commit reference   Note that this isn t critical for me today because I have daily backups and can go back to yesterday s working tree to get my changes  I m asking because there must be an easier way

User · Answer

To get the list of stashes that are still in your repository, but not reachable any more:

git fsck --unreachable | grep commit | cut -d" " -f3 | xargs git log --merges --no-walk --grep=WIP

If you gave a title to your stash, replace "WIP" in -grep=WIP at the end of the command with a part of your message, e.g. -grep=Tesselation.

The command is grepping for "WIP" because the default commit message for a stash is in the form WIP on mybranch: [previous-commit-hash] Message of the previous commit.

User · Answer

If you didn t close the terminal  just look at the output from git stash pop and you ll have the object ID of the dropped stash  It normally looks like this     git stash pop       Dropped refs stash  0   2ca03e22256be97f9e40f08e6d6773c7d41dbfd1     Note that git stash drop also produces the same line    To get that stash back  just run git branch tmp 2cae03e  and you ll get it as a branch  To convert this to a stash  run   git stash apply tmp git stash   Having it as a branch also allows you to manipulate it freely  for example  to cherry-pick it or merge it

User · Answer

Just wanted to mention this addition to the accepted solution   It wasn t immediately obvious to me the first time I tried this method  maybe it should have been   but to apply the stash from the hash value  just use  git stash apply       git stash apply ad38abbf76e26c803b27a6079348192d32f52219   When I was new to git  this wasn t clear to me  and I was trying different combinations of  git show    git apply    patch   etc

User · Answer

I just constructed a command that helped me find my lost stash commit   for ref in  find  git objects   sed -e  s  git objects       grep     tr -d     do if    git cat-file -t  ref     commit     then git show --summary  ref  fi  done   less   This lists all the objects in the  git objects tree  locates the ones that are of type commit  then shows a summary of each one  From this point it was just a matter of looking through the commits to find an appropriate  WIP on work  6a9bb2    work  is my branch  619bb2 is a recent commit    I note that if I use  git stash apply  instead of  git stash pop  I wouldn t have this problem  and if I use  git stash save message  then the commit might have been easier to find   Update  With Nathan s idea  this becomes shorter   for ref in  git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -d    -f3   do git show --summary  ref  done   less

User · Answer

You can achieve this in 2 easy steps  List lost stashes -- gt  run this command for a project where all stashes were trashed   git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -d     -f3   xargs git log --merges --no-walk   Send a lost stash back where it comes from -- gt  Let   s use the commit hash of the second stash   git update-ref refs stash 4b3fc45c94caadcc87d783064624585c194f4be8 -m  quot My recovered stash quot

User · Answer

If you didn t close the terminal  just look at the output from git stash pop and you ll have the object ID of the dropped stash  It normally looks like this     git stash pop       Dropped refs stash  0   2ca03e22256be97f9e40f08e6d6773c7d41dbfd1     Note that git stash drop also produces the same line    To get that stash back  just run git branch tmp 2cae03e  and you ll get it as a branch  To convert this to a stash  run   git stash apply tmp git stash   Having it as a branch also allows you to manipulate it freely  for example  to cherry-pick it or merge it

User · Answer

I just constructed a command that helped me find my lost stash commit   for ref in  find  git objects   sed -e  s  git objects       grep     tr -d     do if    git cat-file -t  ref     commit     then git show --summary  ref  fi  done   less   This lists all the objects in the  git objects tree  locates the ones that are of type commit  then shows a summary of each one  From this point it was just a matter of looking through the commits to find an appropriate  WIP on work  6a9bb2    work  is my branch  619bb2 is a recent commit    I note that if I use  git stash apply  instead of  git stash pop  I wouldn t have this problem  and if I use  git stash save message  then the commit might have been easier to find   Update  With Nathan s idea  this becomes shorter   for ref in  git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -d    -f3   do git show --summary  ref  done   less

User · Answer

You can achieve this in 2 easy steps  List lost stashes -- gt  run this command for a project where all stashes were trashed   git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -d     -f3   xargs git log --merges --no-walk   Send a lost stash back where it comes from -- gt  Let   s use the commit hash of the second stash   git update-ref refs stash 4b3fc45c94caadcc87d783064624585c194f4be8 -m  quot My recovered stash quot

User · Answer

git fsck --unreachable   grep commit should show the sha1  although the list it returns might be quite large  git show  lt sha1 gt  will show if it is the commit you want   git cherry-pick -m 1  lt sha1 gt  will merge the commit onto the current branch

User · Answer

I just constructed a command that helped me find my lost stash commit   for ref in  find  git objects   sed -e  s  git objects       grep     tr -d     do if    git cat-file -t  ref     commit     then git show --summary  ref  fi  done   less   This lists all the objects in the  git objects tree  locates the ones that are of type commit  then shows a summary of each one  From this point it was just a matter of looking through the commits to find an appropriate  WIP on work  6a9bb2    work  is my branch  619bb2 is a recent commit    I note that if I use  git stash apply  instead of  git stash pop  I wouldn t have this problem  and if I use  git stash save message  then the commit might have been easier to find   Update  With Nathan s idea  this becomes shorter   for ref in  git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -d    -f3   do git show --summary  ref  done   less

User · Answer

If you want to restash a lost stash  you need to find the hash of your lost stash first   As Aristotle Pagaltzis suggested a git fsck should help you   Personally I use my log-all alias which show me every commit  recoverable commits  to have a better view of the situation    git log --graph --decorate --pretty oneline --abbrev-commit --all   git fsck --no-reflogs   grep commit   cut -d    -f3    You can do an even faster search if you re looking only for  WIP on  messages   Once you know your sha1  you simply change your stash reflog to add the old stash    git update-ref refs stash ed6721d   You ll probably prefer to have an associated message so a -m  git update-ref -m    git log -1 --pretty format   s  ed6721d   refs stash ed6721d   And you ll even want to use this as an alias    restash    git update-ref -m   git log -1 --pretty format   s   1  refs stash  1

User · Answer

Why do people ask this question  Because they don t yet know about or understand the reflog   Most answers to this question give long commands with options almost nobody will remember  So people come into this question and copy paste whatever they think they need and forget it almost immediately after   I would advise everyone with this question to just check the reflog  git reflog   not much more than that  Once you see that list of all commits there are a hundred ways to find out what commit you re looking for and  to cherry-pick it or create a branch from it  In the process you ll have learned about the reflog and useful options to various basic git commands

User · Answer

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  quot   quot   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  quot WIP on quot   if you did not supply a message when you did git stash

User · Answer

Why do people ask this question  Because they don t yet know about or understand the reflog   Most answers to this question give long commands with options almost nobody will remember  So people come into this question and copy paste whatever they think they need and forget it almost immediately after   I would advise everyone with this question to just check the reflog  git reflog   not much more than that  Once you see that list of all commits there are a hundred ways to find out what commit you re looking for and  to cherry-pick it or create a branch from it  In the process you ll have learned about the reflog and useful options to various basic git commands

User · Answer

What I came here looking for is how to actually get the stash back  regardless of what I have checked out  In particular  I had stashed something  then checked out an older version  then poped it  but the stash was a no-op at that earlier time point  so the stash disappeared  I couldn t just do git stash to push it back on the stack  This worked for me     git checkout somethingOld   git stash pop     nothing added to commit but untracked files present  use  git add  to track  Dropped refs stash  0   27f6bd8ba3c4a34f134e12fe69bf69c192f71179    git checkout 27f6bd8ba3c   git reset HEAD       Make the working tree differ from the parent    git stash   Put the stash back in the stack  Saved working directory and index state WIP on  no branch   c2be516 Some message  HEAD is now at c2be516 Some message    git checkout somethingOld   Now we are back where we were    In retrospect  I should have been using git stash apply not git stash pop  I was doing a bisect and had a little patch that I wanted to apply at every bisect step  Now I m doing this     git reset --hard  git bisect good  git stash apply     Run tests   git reset --hard  git bisect bad  git stash apply etc

User · Answer

The accepted answer by Aristotle will show all reachable commits  including non-stash-like commits  To filter out the noise   git fsck --no-reflog     awk   dangling commit   print  3       xargs git log --no-walk --format   H      --grep  WIP on  --min-parents 3 --max-parents 3   This will only include commits which have exactly 3 parent commits  which a stash will have   and whose message includes  WIP on    Keep in mind  that if you saved your stash with a message  e g  git stash save  My newly created stash    this will override the default  WIP on     message   You can display more information about each commit  e g  display the commit message  or pass it to git stash show   git fsck --no-reflog     awk   dangling commit   print  3       xargs git log --no-walk --format   H      --grep  WIP on  --min-parents 3 --max-parents 3     xargs -n1 -I      bash -c      git log -1 --format medium --color always       echo      git stash show --color always       echo  echo      less -R

User · Answer

Windows PowerShell equivalent using gitk   gitk --all   git fsck --no-reflog   Select-String   dangling commit                Line Split      2      There is probably a more efficient way to do this in one pipe  but this does the job

User · Answer

I couldn t get any of the answers to work on Windows in a simple command window  Windows 7 in my case   awk  grep and Select-string weren t recognized as commands  So I tried a different approach    first run  git fsck --unreachable   findstr  commit  copy the output to notepad find replace  unreachable commit  with start cmd  k git show   will look something like this   start cmd  k git show 8506d235f935b92df65d58e7d75e9441220537a4 start cmd  k git show 44078733e1b36962571019126243782421fcd8ae start cmd  k git show ec09069ec893db4ec1901f94eefc8dc606b1dbf1 start cmd  k git show d00aab9198e8b81d052d90720165e48b287c302e   save as a  bat file and run it the script will open a bunch of command windows  showing each commit if you found the one you re looking for  run  git stash apply  your hash     may not be the best solution  but worked for me

User · Answer

In OSX with git v2 6 4  I just run git stash drop accidentally  then I found it by going trough below steps  If you know name of the stash then use       git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -c 20-   xargs git show   grep -B 6 -A 2  lt name of the stash gt   otherwise you will find ID from the result by manually with     git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -c 20-   xargs git show  Then when you find the commit-id just hit the git stash apply  commit-id   Hope this helps someone quickly

User · Answer

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  quot   quot   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  quot WIP on quot   if you did not supply a message when you did git stash

User · Answer

git fsck --unreachable   grep commit should show the sha1  although the list it returns might be quite large  git show  lt sha1 gt  will show if it is the commit you want   git cherry-pick -m 1  lt sha1 gt  will merge the commit onto the current branch

User · Answer

To see the commits in terminal  only filtering the ones we care about we can use  git log --oneline --all --grep  quot  WIP on      a-f0-9    quot  --grep  quot  On        quot     env LANG C git fsck --no-reflog   awk   dangling commit   print  3      This is based on Aristotle Pagaltzis answer

User · Answer

Just wanted to mention this addition to the accepted solution   It wasn t immediately obvious to me the first time I tried this method  maybe it should have been   but to apply the stash from the hash value  just use  git stash apply       git stash apply ad38abbf76e26c803b27a6079348192d32f52219   When I was new to git  this wasn t clear to me  and I was trying different combinations of  git show    git apply    patch   etc

User · Answer

I just constructed a command that helped me find my lost stash commit   for ref in  find  git objects   sed -e  s  git objects       grep     tr -d     do if    git cat-file -t  ref     commit     then git show --summary  ref  fi  done   less   This lists all the objects in the  git objects tree  locates the ones that are of type commit  then shows a summary of each one  From this point it was just a matter of looking through the commits to find an appropriate  WIP on work  6a9bb2    work  is my branch  619bb2 is a recent commit    I note that if I use  git stash apply  instead of  git stash pop  I wouldn t have this problem  and if I use  git stash save message  then the commit might have been easier to find   Update  With Nathan s idea  this becomes shorter   for ref in  git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -d    -f3   do git show --summary  ref  done   less

User · Answer

I liked Aristotle s approach  but didn t like using GITK    as I m used to using GIT from the command line    Instead  I took the dangling commits and output the code to a DIFF file for review in my code editor   git show    git fsck --no-reflog   awk   dangling commit   print  3      gt    stash recovery diff   Now you can load up the resulting diff txt file  its in your home folder  into your txt editor and see the actual code and resulting SHA   Then just use   git stash apply ad38abbf76e26c803b27a6079348192d32f52219

User · Answer

My favorite is this one-liner   git log --oneline     git fsck --no-reflogs   awk   dangling commit   print  3       This is basically the same idea as this answer but much shorter  Of course  you can still add --graph to get a tree-like display   When you have found the commit in the list  apply with  git stash apply THE COMMIT HASH FOUND   For me  using --no-reflogs did reveal the lost stash entry  but --unreachable  as found in many other answers  did not   Run it on git bash when you are under Windows   Credits  The details of the above commands are taken from https   gist github com joseluisq 7f0f1402f05c45bac10814a9e38f81bf

User · Answer

What I came here looking for is how to actually get the stash back  regardless of what I have checked out  In particular  I had stashed something  then checked out an older version  then poped it  but the stash was a no-op at that earlier time point  so the stash disappeared  I couldn t just do git stash to push it back on the stack  This worked for me     git checkout somethingOld   git stash pop     nothing added to commit but untracked files present  use  git add  to track  Dropped refs stash  0   27f6bd8ba3c4a34f134e12fe69bf69c192f71179    git checkout 27f6bd8ba3c   git reset HEAD       Make the working tree differ from the parent    git stash   Put the stash back in the stack  Saved working directory and index state WIP on  no branch   c2be516 Some message  HEAD is now at c2be516 Some message    git checkout somethingOld   Now we are back where we were    In retrospect  I should have been using git stash apply not git stash pop  I was doing a bisect and had a little patch that I wanted to apply at every bisect step  Now I m doing this     git reset --hard  git bisect good  git stash apply     Run tests   git reset --hard  git bisect bad  git stash apply etc

User · Answer

Recovered it by using following steps    Identify the deleted stash hash code    gitk --all    git fsck --no-reflog   awk   dangling commit   print  3     Cherry Pick the Stash   git cherry-pick -m 1  stash hash code Resolve Conflicts if any using    git mergetool   Additionally you might be having issues with commit message if you are using gerrit  Please Stash your changes before following next alternatives    Use hard reset to previous commit and then recommit this change   You may also stash the change  rebase and  recommit

User · Answer

I couldn t get any of the answers to work on Windows in a simple command window  Windows 7 in my case   awk  grep and Select-string weren t recognized as commands  So I tried a different approach    first run  git fsck --unreachable   findstr  commit  copy the output to notepad find replace  unreachable commit  with start cmd  k git show   will look something like this   start cmd  k git show 8506d235f935b92df65d58e7d75e9441220537a4 start cmd  k git show 44078733e1b36962571019126243782421fcd8ae start cmd  k git show ec09069ec893db4ec1901f94eefc8dc606b1dbf1 start cmd  k git show d00aab9198e8b81d052d90720165e48b287c302e   save as a  bat file and run it the script will open a bunch of command windows  showing each commit if you found the one you re looking for  run  git stash apply  your hash     may not be the best solution  but worked for me

User · Answer

You can list all unreachable commits by writing this command in terminal -   git fsck --unreachable   Check unreachable commit hash -   git show hash   Finally apply if you find the stashed item -   git stash apply hash

User · Answer

Windows PowerShell equivalent using gitk   gitk --all   git fsck --no-reflog   Select-String   dangling commit                Line Split      2      There is probably a more efficient way to do this in one pipe  but this does the job

User · Answer

I want to add to the accepted solution another good way to go through all the changes  when you either don t have gitk available or no X for output   git fsck --no-reflog   awk   dangling commit   print  3    gt  tmp commits  for h in  cat tmp commits   do git show  h   less  done   Then you get all the diffs for those hashes displayed one after another  Press  q  to get to the next diff

User · Answer

git fsck --unreachable   grep commit should show the sha1  although the list it returns might be quite large  git show  lt sha1 gt  will show if it is the commit you want   git cherry-pick -m 1  lt sha1 gt  will merge the commit onto the current branch

User · Answer

If you want to restash a lost stash  you need to find the hash of your lost stash first   As Aristotle Pagaltzis suggested a git fsck should help you   Personally I use my log-all alias which show me every commit  recoverable commits  to have a better view of the situation    git log --graph --decorate --pretty oneline --abbrev-commit --all   git fsck --no-reflogs   grep commit   cut -d    -f3    You can do an even faster search if you re looking only for  WIP on  messages   Once you know your sha1  you simply change your stash reflog to add the old stash    git update-ref refs stash ed6721d   You ll probably prefer to have an associated message so a -m  git update-ref -m    git log -1 --pretty format   s  ed6721d   refs stash ed6721d   And you ll even want to use this as an alias    restash    git update-ref -m   git log -1 --pretty format   s   1  refs stash  1

User · Answer

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  quot   quot   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  quot WIP on quot   if you did not supply a message when you did git stash

User · Answer

My favorite is this one-liner   git log --oneline     git fsck --no-reflogs   awk   dangling commit   print  3       This is basically the same idea as this answer but much shorter  Of course  you can still add --graph to get a tree-like display   When you have found the commit in the list  apply with  git stash apply THE COMMIT HASH FOUND   For me  using --no-reflogs did reveal the lost stash entry  but --unreachable  as found in many other answers  did not   Run it on git bash when you are under Windows   Credits  The details of the above commands are taken from https   gist github com joseluisq 7f0f1402f05c45bac10814a9e38f81bf

User · Answer

To get the list of stashes that are still in your repository, but not reachable any more:

git fsck --unreachable | grep commit | cut -d" " -f3 | xargs git log --merges --no-walk --grep=WIP

If you gave a title to your stash, replace "WIP" in -grep=WIP at the end of the command with a part of your message, e.g. -grep=Tesselation.

The command is grepping for "WIP" because the default commit message for a stash is in the form WIP on mybranch: [previous-commit-hash] Message of the previous commit.

User · Answer

I liked Aristotle s approach  but didn t like using GITK    as I m used to using GIT from the command line    Instead  I took the dangling commits and output the code to a DIFF file for review in my code editor   git show    git fsck --no-reflog   awk   dangling commit   print  3      gt    stash recovery diff   Now you can load up the resulting diff txt file  its in your home folder  into your txt editor and see the actual code and resulting SHA   Then just use   git stash apply ad38abbf76e26c803b27a6079348192d32f52219

User · Answer

In OSX with git v2 6 4  I just run git stash drop accidentally  then I found it by going trough below steps  If you know name of the stash then use       git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -c 20-   xargs git show   grep -B 6 -A 2  lt name of the stash gt   otherwise you will find ID from the result by manually with     git fsck --unreachable   grep commit   cut -c 20-   xargs git show  Then when you find the commit-id just hit the git stash apply  commit-id   Hope this helps someone quickly

User · Answer

You can list all unreachable commits by writing this command in terminal -   git fsck --unreachable   Check unreachable commit hash -   git show hash   Finally apply if you find the stashed item -   git stash apply hash

User · Answer

Recovered it by using following steps    Identify the deleted stash hash code    gitk --all    git fsck --no-reflog   awk   dangling commit   print  3     Cherry Pick the Stash   git cherry-pick -m 1  stash hash code Resolve Conflicts if any using    git mergetool   Additionally you might be having issues with commit message if you are using gerrit  Please Stash your changes before following next alternatives    Use hard reset to previous commit and then recommit this change   You may also stash the change  rebase and  recommit

User · Answer

To see the commits in terminal  only filtering the ones we care about we can use  git log --oneline --all --grep  quot  WIP on      a-f0-9    quot  --grep  quot  On        quot     env LANG C git fsck --no-reflog   awk   dangling commit   print  3      This is based on Aristotle Pagaltzis answer

User · Answer

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  quot   quot   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  quot WIP on quot   if you did not supply a message when you did git stash

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I want to add to the accepted solution another good way to go through all the changes  when you either don t have gitk available or no X for output   git fsck --no-reflog   awk   dangling commit   print  3    gt  tmp commits  for h in  cat tmp commits   do git show  h   less  done   Then you get all the diffs for those hashes displayed one after another  Press  q  to get to the next diff

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The accepted answer by Aristotle will show all reachable commits  including non-stash-like commits  To filter out the noise   git fsck --no-reflog     awk   dangling commit   print  3       xargs git log --no-walk --format   H      --grep  WIP on  --min-parents 3 --max-parents 3   This will only include commits which have exactly 3 parent commits  which a stash will have   and whose message includes  WIP on    Keep in mind  that if you saved your stash with a message  e g  git stash save  My newly created stash    this will override the default  WIP on     message   You can display more information about each commit  e g  display the commit message  or pass it to git stash show   git fsck --no-reflog     awk   dangling commit   print  3       xargs git log --no-walk --format   H      --grep  WIP on  --min-parents 3 --max-parents 3     xargs -n1 -I      bash -c      git log -1 --format medium --color always       echo      git stash show --color always       echo  echo      less -R

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git fsck --unreachable   grep commit should show the sha1  although the list it returns might be quite large  git show  lt sha1 gt  will show if it is the commit you want   git cherry-pick -m 1  lt sha1 gt  will merge the commit onto the current branch

[git] How to recover a dropped stash in Git?

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