GitLens — Supercharge Git in VS Code

Understand any line of code, keep every branch, worktree, and coding agent in view, and ship cleaner history — without leaving VS Code.

GitLens is an open-source extension built and maintained by GitKraken, and installed more than 51 million times.

Your repository moves faster than it used to. Coding agents open branches, worktrees pile up, and pull requests stack while you're still reading a diff. GitLens pulls all of it into one interactive view — history, working changes, branches, worktrees, and live agent activity together — then helps you review it, rebase it, and shape it into commits someone can actually read.

Start your free 14-day Pro trial — no credit card required.

GitLens Community is free and open-source, forever — and several Pro features, the Commit Graph among them, are free on public repos.

Getting Started

1. Install it — search for GitLens in the Extensions side bar in VS Code.
2. Sign in — a free GitKraken account opens the Commit Graph on your public repos, and starts your trial if you want it everywhere.
3. Open the Commit Graph — click the GitLens icon in the activity bar, and there it is: your history, your working changes, and everything in flight. (GitLens: Show Commit Graph works too.)
4. Connect what you use — your Git host and issue tracker for pull requests, issues, and autolinks, then your coding agents for session tracking and the GitKraken MCP.

💡 Want new features first? Hit Switch to Pre-Release Version on the GitLens extension page in VS Code.

Preview features require a free GitKraken account and may become Pro features in the future. Experimental features are on by default but still changing.

See Everything in One Place — Commit Graph

Answering "what is actually going on in this repo right now" usually takes a view for branches, another for stashes, a terminal for status, and a browser tab for pull requests. The Commit Graph answers it in one place, and lets you act on the answer. Learn more

• Live state on every row — ahead/behind, unpushed, unpulled, change size, and lanes you can fold away.
• Your uncommitted work, in the history — a row per worktree. Stage, commit, stash, or send it to Compose Commits.
• Act from the row — branch, merge, rebase, cherry-pick, revert, stash, push, pull, open a pull request.
• Details in place — commits, branches, stashes, pull requests, comparisons. They stack as sheets; Esc backs out.
• The whole repo in the side bar — Overview, Agents, Pull Requests, Worktrees, Branches, Remotes, Stashes, Tags. Click one to scope the graph.
• Search that speaks Git — message:, author:, file:, change:, or just describe what you're after.
• Always know where you are — jump to HEAD, upstream, or merge target. / finds any branch; the keyboard drives all of it.

Zoom Out and Spot the Patterns — Visualizations

Who should I ask about this file? Where is all the churn? What has that agent actually been touching? A list of commits can't tell you.

• Visual History — a timeline of how a file or a repository evolved: when changes landed, how big they were, who made them. Good for finding the moment something turned, or who to ask about it.
• Files Treemap Experimental — your repository as blocks sized by file and colored by type. Zoom into a folder to see what's actually in there.
• Commits Treemap Experimental — the same map, colored by how much each area has been changing.
• Agent Activity Treemap Experimental — the same map, live: where your agents are reading and editing right now, cooling as they move on.

Open these from the Commit Graph, or Visual History on its own with Show Visual History.

Work in Parallel — Worktrees and Agents

You stash to switch branches and lose your place. An agent is off working somewhere and you can't tell whether it's running, stuck, or waiting on you. Both get worse the more places your work lives.

Worktrees Without Losing Track

A worktree is a second checkout of the same repository — a branch you can leave open without stashing a thing. GitLens takes over the bookkeeping around it.

• Create one from a branch, a commit, or a pull request, and open it in this window or a new one.
• Every worktree gets its own working-changes row in the Commit Graph, so you can see which are dirty without opening them.
• Move work across them — copy your working changes over, or apply a stash into another worktree.
• Open a terminal in one, reveal it in your file manager, or delete it when you're done.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗