How to search authors in Git history
Łukasz Holeczek
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Tracking individual developer contributions, reviewing specific author’s work, or finding who made certain changes requires filtering commits by author.
As the creator of CoreUI with over 25 years of software development experience, I regularly search Git history to track contributions across team members.
Git log provides the --author flag to filter commits by author name or email using pattern matching.
This approach helps identify who worked on specific features, review coding patterns, or analyze contribution frequency.
Use git log --author to filter commits by developer name or email address.
# Find commits by author name
git log --author='John'
# Search by email
git log --author='[email protected]'
# Case-insensitive search
git log --author='john' -i
# Multiple authors (OR)
git log --author='John\|Jane'
# Show one-line summary
git log --author='John' --oneline
# Show commits with patches
git log --author='John' -p
# Count commits by author
git log --author='John' --oneline | wc -l
# Show commits in date range
git log --author='John' --since='2025-01-01' --until='2025-12-31'
# Show only files changed
git log --author='John' --name-only
# Show statistics
git log --author='John' --stat
# Pretty format with date
git log --author='John' --pretty=format:'%h %ad %s' --date=short
# Find commits NOT by specific author
git log --perl-regexp --author='^((?!John).*)$'
# Show all authors in repository
git log --format='%aN' | sort -u
# Count commits per author
git shortlog -sn
# Show author contributions in date range
git shortlog -sn --since='2025-01-01' --until='2025-12-31'
Combine author search with other filters:
# Author commits to specific file
git log --author='John' -- src/components/Button.js
# Author commits with specific message
git log --author='John' --grep='fix'
# Author commits that changed specific code
git log --author='John' -S'apiKey'
# Author merge commits only
git log --author='John' --merges
# Author commits excluding merges
git log --author='John' --no-merges
Best Practice Note
Author search uses regex patterns, so you can search by partial names. Git matches against both author name and email. Use git shortlog for a summary of commits per author—it’s specifically designed for contribution analysis. The --committer flag filters by who committed (vs authored) the code, useful for tracking code integration. This is how we analyze CoreUI development—filtering by author to review contributions, identify expertise areas, and understand team velocity across different project phases.
