Refined GitHub

Browser extension that simplifies the GitHub interface and adds useful features

We use GitHub a lot and notice many annoyances we’d like to fix. So here be dragons.

Our hope is that GitHub will notice and implement some of these much-needed improvements. So if you like any of these improvements, please open a discussion on GitHub feedback or contact GitHub support about doing it.

GitHub Enterprise is also supported: How to enable it.

The GITHUB and REFINED GITHUB trademarks are owned by GitHub, Inc. and used under license.

Install

and other Chromium browsers

including Firefox Android

on Mac, iOS and iPadOS

If you love Refined GitHub, consider sponsoring or hiring the maintainer @fregante

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Highlights 🔥

Makes whitespace characters visible	Tells you whether you're looking at the latest version of a repository, or if there are any unreleased commits
Shows how far behind a PR head branch is + tells you its base commit	Lets you hide every event except comments or unresolved comments in issues and PRs
Lets you subscribe to opening/closing events of issues in one click	Adds a link to the default branch on directory listings and files
Adds a button to discard all the changes to a file in a PR	Select notifications by type and status

Repositories

• 🔥 Adds a build/CI status icon next to the repo’s name.
• Adds useful links to the repository navigation dropdown
• Adds a link to swap branches in the branch compare view.
• Displays the age of the repository in the sidebar.
• In your forked repos, shows number of your open PRs to the original repo.
• Makes some buttons on repository lists more compact to make room for other features.
• Automatically disables projects and wikis when creating a repository.
• Makes sidebars sticky in repositories, issues, and PRs, if they fit the viewport.
• Adds a link to visit the user’s github.io website from its repo.
• In the workflows sidebar, shows an indicator that a workflow can be triggered manually, and its next scheduled time if relevant.
• Simplifies the deletion of repositories. Adds “Delete fork” button on 0-star repos. Enables shift alt clicks to delete repos in 2 clicks.
• Helps you find forks on archived repos.
• Moves the “Security” and “Insights” to the repository navigation dropdown. Also moves the “Projects”, “Actions” and “Wiki” tabs if they’re empty/unused.
• Adds the profile picture to the header of public repositories.
• Adds a link to create issues from anywhere in a repository.
• Shows a small avatar next to the username in issue/PR lists and mentions.
• 🔥 Adds a link back to the PR that ran the workflow.
• Makes the tabs more compact on mobile so more of them can be seen.
• Shows whether a repo is a fork and adds the number of stars to its header.
• When navigating a repo’s file on a specific tag, it adds a link to see the release/tag itself.
• Lets you cancel or delete workflow runs faster from the workflow list.
• Unwraps the “Re-run jobs” dropdown into individual buttons and adds a keyboard shortcut to re-run failed jobs: r f.

File management

• Adds a button to download entire folders, via https://download-directory.github.io.
• Adds a button to edit files from the repo file list.
• Enables the File Finder keyboard shortcut (t) on entire repository.
• Shows the associated PRs on branches for forked repositories.
• Adds a link to preview HTML files.
• Highlights the most-recently-modified items in file lists.
• Lets you see the previous version of a file in one click.

Code

• Linkifies issue/PR references and URLs in code.
• Enhances the y hotkey to also copy the permalink.
• Linkifies symbolic links files.
• Alerts you if the current file is altered by an open PR.
• Reduces tabs’ size to 4 spaces instead of 8 where GitHub doesn’t follow the user’s preferences.
• Adds a keyboard shortcut to deselect the current line: esc.
• Shows Markdown front matter as vertical table.
• On branch commit lists, shows the PR that touches the current branch.

Writing comments

• 🔥 Enables tab and shift tab for indentation in comment fields.
• Adds a button in the text editor to insert collapsible content (via <details>).
• 🔥 Auto-resizes comment fields to fit their content and no longer show scroll bars.
• Lets you edit any comment with one click instead of having to open a dropdown.
• Wraps selected text when pressing one of Markdown symbols instead of replacing it: [ ` ' " * ~ _
• Hides unnecessary comment field tooltips and toolbar items (each one has a keyboard shortcut.)
• Adds a button to @mention a user in issues and PRs.
• Adds a button in the text editor to quickly insert a simplified HTML table.
• Notifies the user of unfinished comments in hidden tabs.
• Adds a button to delete review comments in one click when editing them.
• Disables the enter-to-submit shortcut in some commit/PR/issue title fields to avoid accidental submissions. Use ctrl enter instead.
• Warns against self-reference links, helping you avoid mistakes.

Reading comments

• 🔥 Adds reaction avatars showing who reacted to a comment.
• Embeds short gists when linked in comments on their own lines.
• Adds links to browse the repository and linked files at the time of each comment.
• Adds the real name of users by their usernames.
• Shortens URLs and repo URLs to readable references like “_user/repo/.file@d71718d“.
• 🔥 Previews hidden comments inline.
• 🔥 Highlights the most useful comment in issues.
• Hides reaction comments (“+1”, “👍”, …) (except the maintainers’) but they can still be shown.
• Limits the height of tall code blocks and quotes.
• Simplifies the UI to hide comments.
• Makes the “comment” icon in issue lists link to the latest comment of the issue.
• On long conversations where GitHub hides comments under a “N hidden items. Load more…”, alt-clicking it will load up to 200 comments at once instead of 60.
• Adds shortcuts to issues, PRs conversations, and PR file lists: j focuses the comment/file below; k focuses the comment/file above.
• Informs you that there are hidden comments in the header of long issues. Also scrolls down to the hidden comments when pressing Cmd+F or Ctrl+F.

Conversations

• Lets you open all visible issues/PRs at once.
• Makes the issue/PR list’s filters toolbar sticky.
• Makes the comment header sticky when scrolling through long comments. Requires show-names to be enabled.
• Highlights issues/PRs opened by you or the current repo’s collaborators.
• In issue/PR lists, aligns the labels to the left, below each title.
• 🔥 Changes the default sort order of issues/PRs to Recently updated.
• Adds filters for PRs in your repos and commented on by you in the global PR search.
• 🔥 Hides empty sections (or just their “empty” label) in the issue/PR sidebar.
• Hides Projects filter in issue/PR lists if it is empty.
• Adds a shortcut to toggle all similar items (minimized comments, deferred diffs, etc) at once: alt click on each button or checkbox.
• Lets you toggle between is:open/is:closed/is:merged filters in searches.
• Adds a “Bugs” tab to repos, if there are any open issues with the “bug” label.
• Replaces the “opened” time with the “updated” time on pinned issues.
• Changes the layout of pinned issues from side-by-side to a standard list.
• Adds one-click buttons to remove labels in issues/PRs.
• Removes duplicate information in the header of PRs (“User wants to merge X commits from Y into Z”)
• Dims commits and PRs by bots to reduce noise.
• Adds a shortcut to cancel editing a issue/PR title: esc.
• Hides the update time of issues/PRs in lists when it matches the open/closed/merged time.
• Links the “Contributor”, “Member” and “Collaborator” labels on comments to the author’s commits on the repo.
• Adds a link to jump to the latest close event of a issue/PR.
• Lets you “close issue as unplanned” in one click instead of three.
• Show a label on locked issues and PRs.

Viewing pull requests

• Adds a link to the non-PR commit when visiting a PR commit.
• Adds Checks and Draft PR dropdown filters in PR lists.
• Automatically shows all checks without scrolling when expanding the checks panel.
• Shows color-coded review counts in PR lists.
• Shows the base branch in PR lists if it’s not the default branch.
• Hides inactive deployments in PRs.
• Adds duplicate commit navigation buttons at the bottom of the Commits tab page.
• Adds comment indicators when comments are hidden in PR review.
• Shows which PRs have conflicts in PR lists.
• Adds diff stats on PR commits.
• Adds a line-through to the deleted branches in PRs.
• Mark/unmark multiple files as “Viewed” in the PR Files tab. Click on the first checkbox you want to mark/unmark and then shift-click another one; all the files between the two checkboxes will be marked/unmarked as “Viewed”.
• 🔥 Shows the first Git tag a merged PR was included in or suggests creating a release if not yet released.
• Jumps to first non-viewed file in a PR when clicking on the progress bar.
• Adds a link to jump to the latest changed requested comment.
• Adds a link to open the latest deployment from the header of a PR.
• Always uses unified diffs on files where split diffs aren’t useful.
• Makes it easier to distinguish draft PR in lists.

Editing pull requests

• 🔥 Uses the PR’s title as the default squash commit title and updates the PR’s title to match the commit title, if changed.
• Adds an “Update branch” button to every PR. GitHub has the same feature, but it must be manually configured with protected branches.
• Simplifies the PR review form: Approve or reject reviews faster with one-click review-type buttons.
• Adds keyboard shortcuts to cycle through PR tabs: g ← and g →, or g 1, g 2, g 3, and g 4.
• Automatically deletes the branch right after merging a PR, if possible. Common branch names known to be long-lived are excluded (develop, release/*, etc)
• Lets you create draft PRs and public gists in one click.
• Clears the PR merge commit message of clutter, leaving only deduplicated co-authors.
• Adds quick-review buttons to the PR sidebar, automatically focuses the review textarea, and adds a keyboard shortcut to open the review popup: v.
• Uses the first commit for a new PR’s title and description.

Commits

• Adds links to .patch and .diff files in commits.
• Adds links to view the raw version, the blame, and the history of files in PRs and commits.
• Adds one-click buttons to change diff style and to ignore the whitespace and a keyboard shortcut to ignore the whitespace: d w.
• Widens the Expand diff button to be clickable across the screen.
• Hides diff signs since diffs are color coded already.
• Suggests limiting commit and PR titles to 72 characters.
• Displays the corresponding tags next to commits.
• Marks merge commits in commit lists.
• When exploring blames, Alt-clicking the “Reblame” buttons will extract the associated PR’s commits first, instead of treating the commit as a single change.
• Indicates with an icon whether files in commits and PRs are being added or removed.
• Enables toggling file diffs by clicking on their header bar.
• Preserves current branch and path when viewing all commits by an author.
• Enables toggling commit messages by clicking on the commit box.
• Linkifies the “X files changed” text on compare pages to allow jumping to the diff.
• Shows conventional commit types as labels before the commit message.

Tags and releases

• Adds a download count next to release assets.
• Adds a Releases tab and a keyboard shortcut: g r.
• Adds a tags dropdown/search on release pages.
• Adds a keyboard shortcut to create a new release while on the Releases page: c.
• 🔥 Adds a link to changes since last tag/release for each tag/release.
• Adds a button to convert a release to draft.
• Adds a button to view the changelog file from the releases page.

Profiles

• On profiles, it shows whether the user follows you.
• Adds a link to the user’s public gists on their profile.
• Marks private organizations on your own profile.
• Adds a keyboard shortcut to visit your own profile: g m.
• Adds a link to the user’s most starred repositories.
• Filters out forks and archived repos from profiles by default, leaving only the sources. (but they can still be shown.)
• Linkifies the user location in their hovercard and profile page.
• Adds a link to the issues and pulls on the user profile repository tab and global search.

Notifications

• Adds a button to the notification page to open all your unread notifications at once.
• 🔥 Adds a button to the global header to open your unread notifications from any page.
• Adds a shortcut to select all visible notifications: a.
• Stops redirecting to notification inbox from notification bar actions while holding Alt.
• Adds a link to the last page of notifications.
• Points PR notifications to the Conversation tabs instead of the commits page, which may be a 404.
• Make the notifications action bar sticky.

Global

• 🔥 Adds possible related pages and alternatives on 404 pages.
• Adds a keyboard shortcut to open selection in new tab when navigating via j and k: shift o.
• Automatically closes dropdown menus when they’re no longer visible.
• GitHub renders `text in backticks` in some places but not others; this features fills in where forgotten.
• Lets you see how others are using the current Action in the Marketplace.
• Shows all of Refined GitHub’s new keyboard shortcuts in the help modal (? hotkey).

Netiquette

• Adds unobtrusive netiquette reminders (old closed issues, highly-active issues, draft PRs, …).
• Warns you when creating a PR from the default branch, as it’s an anti-pattern.
• Warns you when unchecking Allow edits from maintainers, as it’s maintainer-hostile.

Fixes for GitHub shortcomings

• Removes the file hover effect in the repo file browser.
• Removes unnecessary or redundant information from the repository sidebar.
• Linkifies branch references in “Quick PR” pages.
• Points the “View file” on PRs to the branch instead of the commit, so the Edit/Delete buttons will be enabled on the “View file” page.
• Retries downloading images that failed downloading due to GitHub limited proxying.
• Makes some dropdowns 1-click instead of unnecessarily 2-click.
• Suggests fixing links that are wrongly shortened by GitHub.
• Linkifies the username in the edit history popup.
• Avoids creating duplicate PRs when mistakenly clicking “Create pull request” more than once.
• Prevents the merge panel from automatically opening on every page load after it’s been opened once.
• Adds keyboard shortcuts to select items in command palette using ctrl n and ctrl p (macOS only).
• While writing/editing comments, open the preview links in new tab instead of navigating away from the page.
• Redirect to repo issue list when the search doesn‘t include is:pr.
• Drops redundant “readme-ov-file” parameter from repo URLs.
• Closes checks list when clicking outside of modal.
• Linkifies the line numbers where GitHub forgot to add links.
• Scrolls the file tree to the current file.
• Disable modals that reduce user-experience instead of enhancing it.
• Keeps links from opening in new tabs when they shouldn’t. “Open in new tab” must be the user’s choice, not the default behavior.
• Makes certain text clickable, like issue references in the issue title and discussion sidebar.
• Adds a ‘New Milestone’ button to the milestone page.

Previously part of Refined GitHub

GitHub took inspiration from Refined GitHub and natively implemented dozens of its features, 🎉 so they’ve been removed from this extension. You can also see all the past features of Refined GitHub in a single list.

Customization

Most features can be disabled if they are JavaScript-based and you can override our CSS with your own in the extension options.

We’re happy to receive suggestions and contributions, but be aware this is a highly opinionated project. There’s a high bar for adding features. Users will always disagree with something. That being said, we’re open to discussing things.

Links

• Contribution guide