Lazygit Series: The Status Panel

This is the second post in the Lazygit series. You can see a list of all of the posts in this series by visiting the Lazygit Series tag. This week we look at how to best use the status panel.

Lazygit’s status panel offers a concise snapshot of your repository’s current state, showing essential details about your active branch and its relationship with the remote counterpart. While it doesn’t include many interactive features, understanding this panel is key to navigating your repository efficiently.

Accessing and Navigating the Status Panel

Press 1 to open the status panel, located at the top-left corner of Lazygit’s interface by default. You can switch between different panels using the left and right arrow keys or the number keys corresponding to each panel.

Within the status panel, use the up and down arrow keys to navigate through any selectable items. Pressing ? at any time reveals context-sensitive help, including available keyboard shortcuts for the active panel.

What the Status Panel Shows

At a glance, the status panel displays:

• The current repository name.
• The branch you have checked out.
• Symbols indicating how many commits you are ahead (↑) or behind (↓) relative to the remote branch, or a checkmark when you’re up-to-date.

These commit counts help you quickly understand whether you can push local changes, need to pull updates, or if your branch is fully synchronised.

Useful Interactions in the Status Panel

Although primarily informational, the status panel supports a few helpful commands:

• Click on the status panel’s text or press enter to open the repository selector. Here you can quickly switch between recent repositories opened in Lazygit.
• Press a to cycle through different commit log views if multiple log commands are configured.
• Press o to open the Lazygit configuration file for quick viewing or editing.
• Press e to directly edit the configuration file within your editor.

Wrapping Up

The status panel is a simple yet powerful part of Lazygit’s interface, providing instant insight into your branch’s sync status and easy access to repository logs and configuration.

Mastering this panel helps you stay informed and navigate your Git repository with confidence.

Look out for the next post in this series, where we will explore Lazygit’s files panel and its more extensive interactive features.