Checking the Current State with git status

This lesson covers using git status to check your current working state. It's for anyone searching "git status usage."

git status tells you which files have changed and which of those changes haven't been recorded (committed) yet. It's arguably the single most-used Git command — the one you run just to check in during a work session.

In Try It, run git status. Files shown in red are unstaged changes, and files in green are already staged — you can gauge your state from the colors alone.

A common early mistake is not building the habit of checking status before committing. Making a habit of running git status right before every commit prevents the common accident of accidentally recording a file you didn't mean to include — and in real teams, checking status before starting work, before committing, and before switching branches is second nature to most engineers.