How can I change the commit email for every commit I ever made?

[shriyanyamali]

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I used to use an email, but I no longer use it and want to remove it from my GitHub account. My issue is that if I remove it, the thousand commits I made with that email no longer show up on my profile. I don't want to keep it on my account, so is it possible for me to change every single commit I made using that account to the new email which I added to my GitHub account? I used Git and made most of my commit remotely.

[PRIYAtechky]

Once commits are pushed, their author email is permanently tied to the commit history. GitHub shows them on your profile only if the email is linked to your account.

To keep contributions visible, you should leave the old email connected to your GitHub (it doesn’t need to be your primary email).

Rewriting all past commits with a new email is technically possible using git filter-repo or git rebase --root, but it rewrites history, which can cause issues—especially for shared repositories. It’s generally not recommended unless absolutely necessary.

[davevad93]

Hi @shriyanyamali,

Yes, you can rewrite your entire commit history by amending your email address. Once you've added your new email address to GitHub, I also recommend setting it to private using GitHub's noreply email. Go to your email settings, and check the option "Keep my email addresses private", then set your noreply email in git config.

Next, run the following script in your local repo, replace "OLD_EMAIL" and "NEW_EMAIL" with the actual values:.

#!/bin/sh

OLD_EMAIL="old_email"
NEW_EMAIL="new_email"

git filter-branch --env-filter '
OLD_EMAIL="'"$OLD_EMAIL"'"
CORRECT_EMAIL="'"$NEW_EMAIL"'"

if [ "$GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL" = "$OLD_EMAIL" ]
then
    export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="$CORRECT_EMAIL"
fi

if [ "$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL" = "$OLD_EMAIL" ]
then
    export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="$CORRECT_EMAIL"
fi
' --tag-name-filter cat -- --branches --tags

Then run git log to check that the changes have been made correctly in your commit history.

Finally, force push the changes to your remote repo:

git push --force --all

Note that you should perform this step for each repository you own.

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