How to recover lost stash in Git
Łukasz Holeczek
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Recovering lost Git stashes is possible even after dropping or clearing stashes using reflog and fsck commands. As the creator of CoreUI with over 25 years of software development experience, I’ve recovered numerous accidentally dropped stashes. Git retains stashed changes as dangling commits for a period, allowing recovery after stash drop or clear operations. This approach ensures no work is permanently lost when stashes are accidentally removed.
Use git reflog and git fsck to find and recover dropped or cleared stashes.
Recover recently dropped stash:
# You dropped a stash
git stash drop stash@{0}
# View reflog for stash operations
git reflog | grep stash
# Output shows:
# abc1234 refs/stash@{0}: WIP on main: commit message
# def5678 refs/stash@{1}: WIP on main: previous stash
# Apply the dropped stash
git stash apply abc1234
# Or create branch
git branch recovered-stash abc1234
Recover after stash clear:
# You cleared all stashes
git stash clear
# Find stash commits in reflog
git fsck --unreachable | grep commit
# Output shows dangling commits
# unreachable commit abc1234...
# unreachable commit def5678...
# Check each commit
git show abc1234
# If it's your stash, apply it
git stash apply abc1234
List all lost stashes:
# Find all dangling commits
git fsck --no-reflog | grep commit | awk '{print $3}'
# Script to check each one
for commit in $(git fsck --no-reflog | grep commit | awk '{print $3}'); do
echo "=== $commit ==="
git log -1 --oneline $commit
done
# Apply the right one
git stash apply <commit-hash>
Best Practice Note
Git stash commits remain available for recovery for 90 days by default. Use git reflog to find recently dropped stashes. Use git fsck when stash was cleared. Create branches from recovered stashes for safety. Check stash content with git show before applying. This is how we recover stashes in CoreUI development—using reflog and fsck to restore accidentally dropped work without permanent data loss.
