How do I run an interactive git blame inside Vim?

Explanation

The vim-fugitive plugin by Tim Pope provides a powerful interactive :Git blame that goes far beyond the basic command-line git blame. It opens a scroll-bound vertical split showing blame annotations alongside your code, letting you explore the full history of every line without leaving Vim.

How it works

With the current file open, run:

:Git blame

This opens a vertical split on the left with commit hashes, authors, and timestamps for every line. The split is scroll-bound to your code, so scrolling one pane scrolls both.

Navigating blame

The blame buffer has special key mappings — press g? to see them all. The most powerful ones:

Drilling through history

The - key is the real power move. When you see a suspicious commit in the blame output, press - on that line to re-blame the file as it existed before that commit. This lets you walk backward through the complete history of a line, peeling away each change layer by layer.

Press <CR> on any line to jump into the full commit and inspect all of its changes.

Blame a range

You can blame only specific lines by passing a range:

:10,25Git blame

Or select lines in visual mode first, then run :Git blame to blame just that range.

Tips

• Use :Git blame with no filename argument to blame the current file automatically
• Press q to close the blame split
• Combine with :GBrowse from the blame buffer to open the commit on GitHub
• Fugitive respects .mailmap for author name normalization