How to fix nothing to commit, working tree clean in Git

The most common cause is that your editor hasn't saved the changes to disk. Git only sees changes that have been written to the file system.

# Check the actual file modification time
ls -la filename.txt

# Or compare file contents directly
cat filename.txt

In your editor:
- Look for unsaved file indicators (dots, asterisks, or different colors in tabs)
- Press Ctrl+S (or Cmd+S on Mac) to save
- Check if "auto-save" is enabled and working
- Some editors have a "Save All" option (Ctrl+Shift+S)

After saving, run git status again.

Files matching patterns in .gitignore won't appear in git status. This is intentional but can be confusing when you forget what's being ignored.

# Show ignored files
git status --ignored

# Check if a specific file is ignored
git check-ignore -v filename.txt

# List all ignored files
git ls-files --ignored --exclude-standard

If your file is being ignored, either:

1. Remove it from .gitignore (if you want to track it):

# Edit .gitignore and remove the matching pattern
nano .gitignore

2. Force add the ignored file (one-time override):

git add -f path/to/ignored/file.txt

Git allows marking files to be ignored even if they're tracked. This is often done for configuration files that have local modifications.

# List files marked as assume-unchanged
git ls-files -v | grep "^[a-z]"

# List files marked as skip-worktree
git ls-files -v | grep "^S"

If your file appears in these lists, remove the flag:

# Remove assume-unchanged flag
git update-index --no-assume-unchanged path/to/file.txt

# Remove skip-worktree flag
git update-index --no-skip-worktree path/to/file.txt

Now git status should show modifications to these files.

Make sure you're in the right directory and that it's actually a Git repository.

# Show the root of the current Git repository
git rev-parse --show-toplevel

# Confirm you're in a Git repository
git status
# If not in a repo, you'll see: "fatal: not a git repository"

# Show your current working directory
pwd

If you're in a subdirectory, Git will still work, but make sure your changed files are within this repository. You might have:
- Opened a different project folder
- Created files outside the repository root
- Multiple nested Git repositories

Sometimes Git's index (the cache of file states) gets out of sync with the actual files, especially after file system operations or when using network drives.

# Refresh the index to match the file system
git update-index --refresh

# Force a full refresh
git update-index --really-refresh

# Or clear and rebuild the index
rm .git/index
git reset

Note: The last option (rm .git/index) is safe but will unstage any previously staged changes. Use it only if other methods don't work.

After refreshing, check status again:

git status

Git might be normalizing line endings or whitespace, making files appear unchanged even after edits.

# Check your core.autocrlf setting
git config core.autocrlf

# Check if whitespace changes are being ignored
git config core.whitespace

To see differences including whitespace:

# Show all differences, including whitespace
git diff --ignore-blank-lines

# Show differences with whitespace visible
git diff --ws-error-highlight=all

If line endings are the issue:

# Disable autocrlf to see actual changes
git config core.autocrlf false

# Refresh the index
git update-index --refresh

If you created new files, they need to be explicitly added to Git. Untracked files won't cause "nothing to commit" but they also won't be committed.

# Show untracked files
git status -u

# Add a specific file
git add newfile.txt

# Add all new files in the current directory
git add .

# Add all new files in the entire repository
git add -A

After adding, check status:

git status
# Should now show "Changes to be committed"

Interactive add to review each file:

git add -p

You may have already committed your changes and forgotten about it.

# View recent commits
git log --oneline -5

# See what was in the last commit
git show --stat HEAD

# Compare working directory to a specific commit
git diff HEAD~1

If your changes are in the last commit and you need to modify them:

# Amend the last commit (if not pushed)
git commit --amend

# Or undo the last commit but keep changes staged
git reset --soft HEAD~1

Warning: Don't amend commits that have been pushed to a shared repository.