Git Commands Simplification with Git Aliases

Every developer that was using git, asked him/herself: "Why should I use this weird command here? How can I memorize all these non-intuitive flags?". Or: "Why I just cannot undo something with a quite simple command???"
The answer for all of these questions is git aliases: in simple words, you can just redefine a complicated command with a shortcut.

Creating an alias

The easiest and the most safe way to create a git alias is to use git config --global alias.name 'command'. For instance, you can create an alias to create a new branch this way:
git config --global alias.new 'checkout -b', and it will accept an argument as the original git checkout command:

git new feature-branch1
#same as
git checkout -b feature-branch2

How does it work? The git config --global alias... command inserts a new line into the [alias] section of your global configuration file:

$ cat ~/.gitconfig
[alias]
   new = checkout -b

Yes, you can manually add, delete or modify your aliases right here, in ~/.gitconfig file, but I find it less safe.

A way to fix typos

Although most articles and even the original documentation offer you a way to create aliases that consist of several characters, I think this is the wrong way for using it. Have any doubts? Then try to guess what all of these abbreviations mean: co, cob, ci, pu. I prefer to enter aliases that I will not struggle to remember instead of saving a pair of seconds typing them.
But what is really useful is auto-fixing typos. Especially if you know you do the same mistakes over and over again. I usually type git comit missing a character. For me git config --global alias.comit 'commit' alias is really helpful. Other aliases using the same approach (but you may use others for fixing your own typos):

[alias]
   branches = branch
   comit = commit
   chekout = checkout
   swithc = switch

Undo changes made before

The most on-demand command is undoing a commit, and Git has even different options for doing that. I prefer using this: git config --global alias.uncommit 'reset --soft HEAD^'. This command will place you right to the point before you have entered the git commit -m "message" command (of course, if you mean something different under undoing a comment, you should use another command). Another well-known "undoing" option is unstage by running reset HEAD --. One more useful alias in this group if you often stash your commits is git config --global alias.unstash 'stash pop'. It will remove the last stash from its stack and immediately apply to your codebase.
A brief summary for this group of aliases:

[alias]
   uncommit = reset --soft HEAD^
   unstage = reset HEAD --
   unstash = stash pop

More complex aliases

If you start an alias with! character, it will be treated as a shell command, that has some extra power. For example, sequential commands with the && operator, which means that the next command will only run if the previous one succeeds. Try this one: git config --global alias.new-branch '!git checkout main && git pull && git checkout -b'. It will check out you to the main branch, pull everything, create and checkout to the new branch.

#usage
git new-branch feat/UFR-1

You may also want to use positional parameters if you want to provide arguments in your alias. Unfortunately, you cannot do it directly in Git. Instead, you should use !f() { ... }; f to define a shell function f that can take an argument. IE: you can log graphed comments by author using this alias: git config --global alias.graph-by-author '!f() { git log --author="$1" --graph; }; f'. Here $1 is an argument for the function.

#Prints last five commits by User0k using graph
git graph-by-author User0k -5

The default git log is rather ugly and unreadable. One of the best prettifiers to keep it simple and readable is this alias git config --global alias.log-pretty '!git log --pretty=format:"%C(auto)%h %C(red)%as %C(blue)%aN%C(auto)%d%C(green) %s"'. It colorizes commit hash with default color (yellow), date with red, author with blue, leaves colors of HEAD and branches untouched, and colorizes text commit with green. Just compare this picture to what you usually get running git log (or you may play with these colors as well).

After you're satisfied with your new log, it may be helpful to combine it with other features. Let's find all commits by the author using a shell function! Run this alias: git config --global alias.log-by-author '!f() { git log-pretty --author="$1"; }; f'. You may also use numbers to print the desired number of commits, similar to graph-by-author alias above.

I found this alias on FreeCodeCamp and applied preferred colors. It sorts the list of branches by the most recent commit date and colorizes the output: git config --global alias.branches '!git branch --format="%(HEAD) %(color:red)%(refname:short)%(color:yellow) - %(contents:subject) %(color:green)(%(committerdate:relative)) [%(authorname)]" --sort=-committerdate'.

List your aliases, modify and delete them

Modifying aliases is pretty straightforward: just create an alias with the same name (you can modify your ~/.gitconfig file, remember?).
To delete alias, you can execute this command: git config --global --unset alias.name. In rare cases when your alias has multiple values, you will get

$ git config --global --unset alias.alias-name
warning: alias.alias-name has multiple values

Use --unset-all flag in these cases. Again, if you want to create an alias for this, use a shell function and positional parameters: git config --global alias.alias-delete '!f() { git config --global --unset alias."$1"; }; f'. Don't be confused by using git config --global twice here.
The last for today is listing all aliases you have globally. If you run this weird command git config --get-regexp alias, you will get this:

The list is unsorted, and it's hard to understand where you have an alias and what it does exactly. First, let's sort it. Add | sort to your command: git config --get-regexp alias | sort. Looks a little bit better. Now if you want to colorize alias and its command, you may use awk, and after playing with it a little, you may get something like this: git config --global alias.aliases '!git config --get-regexp alias | sort | awk "{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) if(i==1) printf \"\\033[1;33m%s\\033[0m \", \$i; else printf \"\\033[1;32m%s\\033[0m \", \$i; print \"\"}"'. Weird, but it works really well for me: