Restoring the original history

Before Edit History changes a branch, it keeps a backup of where the branch was. The backup is under History Rewrites, in the Recovery group of the sidebar, one row per rewrite: the branch’s name, the short hash it had, and when it was rewritten. It stays for as long as Keep recovery backups in Settings says.

Putting it back

Restore Original… is on the row as you point at it, in its context menu, and in the notification that appears when a rewrite finishes. It asks first, in Restore Original History, and lists both sides of the change: Commits that come back and Rewritten commits that will be removed. Restore Original then moves the branch back, and the backup leaves the group.

Nothing is lost in the other direction either. On the branch you are on, restoring is a hard reset with its usual backup: your local changes, untracked files included, and the rewritten commits go under Hard Resets. Your local changes are not put back by themselves: they wait in that backup — see undoing a discard or a reset. On any other branch only the branch moves, and its rewritten tip is kept under Hard Resets in the same way.

A branch checked out in another worktree is restored from that worktree.

When there is nothing to restore

A rewrite that you abandoned with Abort while it was paused leaves the branch as it was, so it leaves no backup either. After the backup has expired, the old commits may still be in the reflog for a while.