Improved pull request "Files Changed" experience feedback

[Akash1134]

About the new experience

This updated experience focuses on performance, accessibility, and user productivity. Read more in the changelog.

Tip

If you are not already using the new experience, click the ✨Try the new experience in the upper-right corner of the classic "Files changed" page. You can easily switch back from the Preview menu.

✨ What's new

If you are coming from the classic experience, the new experience should feel familiar but adds some significant improvements:

• Comment on any line: You can now comment on any line of a changed file, not just the lines surrounding a change.
• View the description without switching pages: You can now view the pull request description from the new Overview panel on the "Files changed" page.
• Reviewing made easier
  • Enhanced file tree: The file tree is now resizable with indicators showing the files with comments, errors, and warnings.
  • Review your pending comments: Pending comments are now shown in the review submission panel, so you can double-check your feedback before submitting.
  • Draft comments: New comments and replies are saved locally so you won't lose them if you accidentally close your browser or refresh the page.
• Fewer page reloads: Clicking Refresh to pull in new changes, switching between split and unified modes, and other tasks will no longer force a full page refresh.
• Accessibility & readability: Keyboard navigation, screen reader landmarks, and increased line spacing options are now available to make the experience available to everyone.

✨ Updates

See what's been fixed and improved since the launch of the public preview:

• June 26: initial changelog
• July 17: file-level commenting, performance fixes, diff loading and expansion issues, and more
• July 31: rich diff support, improve file tree ordering, and more
• August 21: improved review submission panel usability, submodule support, and lots of fixes
• September 11: temporary single file view to improve scale (see message above)
• September 25: commenting on unchanged lines 🎉 , single file mode improvements, and more
• November 6: apply suggested changes in a batch, collapsible annotations, and more
• November 20: new Overview panel (for viewing PR description), performance and other fixes
• December 11: review by commit, improved commit filtering, filtering improvements, and more
• January 23, 2026: default experience for all users, new experimental mode that uses virtualization to support larger pull requests (up to 3,000 files)
• February 5, 2026: CODEOWNERS validation support added, additional performance improvements

🟡 Limitations

As of the initial public preview release, there are some temporary limitations that will be addressed over time:

• Annotations on unchanged files
• Small screen (e.g. mobile device) responsive layout

While our previous experience had hard limits on large PRs, this new experience is being built to scale. That said, we’re increasing our limits incrementally. To start with, our additional current limitations are:

• Limited to 1,000 files in single file mode or 3,000 in experimental mode
• Comments: 40 in the page (but up to 350 in the Comments side panel)
• Replies per comment: 20
• Alerts: 50

How you can help

1. Report bugs, edge cases, or usability pain points in the replies (screenshots/gifs welcome).
2. Tell us which future enhancements would make the biggest impact on your workflow.

Thanks for helping us build a better review experience—we read every comment!

[willmarcondeseso]

I would like to be able to scroll through the Pull Request while the comment modal is open.

Reason: When a comment is outdated, we need to look at the current version to check if it actually addresses the comment.

I really love this feature! THANK YOU!!!

[m1sea]

hha

[ClydeISM]

I will like to pull a request

[sbs162666-del]

Thanks for the use case and the good suggestion! ✍️ Getting this logged internally ~

[appthemanger-ctrl]

i’d like the steering the copilot feature actually let me steer the copilot. should pause and ask if it’s ok to change something that it didn’t create too…, not just delete

[chaidatjanthasee2025-cpu]

https://no Trip khe tongkhorni jotoni swlai kwbang rwchapmung no swikha no khobjago tei kaisa hinkhe khinai no Trip github.com/orgs/community/discussions/163932#discussioncomment-15812308

[rtalexk]

Update: I just found out that it appears when there's enough space (1280px width). Here's the updated feedback.

I'd like to see the branch name in the sticky header at all times so that I can easily copy it when I'm reviewing a PR.

---

I wrote the following before thoroughly experimenting.

I'd like to see the branch name when the sticky header is shown (i.e., when you've scrolled to the bottom).

The reason is that when I'm reviewing a long PR and want to checkout the branch to continue reviewing it locally, I have to go back all the way up to see or copy the branch name and then go back to where I left off.

[albertoblaz]

Similarly, I miss having a sticky bar below the PR's title to have the "Conversation" tab/button visible without having to scroll bar to the top.

Alternatively, users could still do Cmd+Up to scroll up and then click on the tab, but doing so doesn't scroll if the focus is on the diff panel, so you need to click on the files sidebar or the page margins and then use the shortcut.

It's not a critical issue, but a little annoying.

[pakeeza2425]

I know exactly what you mean — the old sticky bar made it so much quicker to jump back to the Conversation tab. Right now the extra scrolling or focus-shifting adds friction, especially during long reviews. A persistent header or sticky navigation with the tabs always visible would be a nice quality-of-life improvement. Not critical, but definitely one of those small things that would make the workflow feel smoother.

[duduedufsa]

This update focuses on three essential pillars of a modern code review experience: performance, UX, and accessibility.

Optimized diff rendering with reduced memory consumption.

[Endy0611]

This update focuses on three essential pillars of a modern code review experience:
performance, user experience, and accessibility.

We’ve optimized diff rendering to significantly reduce memory consumption,
resulting in faster load times and smoother navigation when reviewing large
pull requests.

[vivoysg372-source]

Default auto goto V2344

[rtalexk]

I find the comment indicators in the sidebar really useful. It might also be useful to have them in the "diff file header."

It's very useful when you've marked a file as "viewed" because you can see how many comments it has as you're scrolling without having to expand it.

[iifeiss780-wq]

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/5486

[dcumings]

[shrynshjn]

this is not showing up for me, rather i am getting a comment option on the pr level, having it on a file level would really be great, current i open two split windows to check my older comments and the latest code.

[eengelhardt]

this is happening for me too.

Some comments are showing up in file and some are not

[xiangsgao]

where is the copilot here?

[rtalexk]

Seamlessly switch between split and unified views.

This is really cool. Is it also possible to seamlessly toggle hiding white spaces? If that's achievable without doing a refresh would be amazing.

[pakeeza2425]

The old flow worked better because features like "hide whitespace" were remembered per pull request, as GitHub highlighted in their 2021 blog post
. The new experience seems to have lost some of that convenience, so restoring those capabilities would improve usability.

[mustmodify]

remembering per-user and per-PR seems both obvious and would result in a significantly better experience.

[ericgreveson]

Thanks for the feedback.

• We are planning to support seamless switching of "hide whitespace-only changes", but no timeline yet.
• We are also exploring the implications of making this a user-level preference so it would be remembered/applied consistently across all PRs. Do others have thoughts/opinions on this?

Would it be possible to set "Compact line height" as a user preference as well? I like the changes overall but much prefer the original setting.

"Hide whitespace-only changes" as a user-pref sounds good.
Regarding line spacing, currently, compact mode is an option but the default is to be "extra line height". I feel like "Compact line height" should be the default (to match the current experience, but also because the greater code density from compact mode is in my opinion likely to be more useful to more people when reviewing, compared to the accessibility-focused greater spacing).

[msmygit]

Peer review comments are now very hard to find and finally after an hour of searching around I found the 💬 icon and when I clicked on the reply, it just barfed and took me to the Files Changed view without showing the review comments or their replies.

[chaidatjanthasee2025-cpu]

_

_

[rtalexk]

Clicking a line number always assumes you want to add a comment.

In the previous experience it only changes the URL to have deep linking.

[aaccioly]

Any workarounds to obtain permanent urls?

[arisacoba]

@rtalexk which browser are you using? Clicking the line number should just highlight the line, not open the add comment flow.

[rtalexk]

I'm using Arc Browser, but this isn't happening anymore. 👀

[thuringia]

This is so much better, I might go back from reviewing with the VSCode extension now 🚀

I love the new alerts panel, unfortunately it looks like pressing a to hide them doesn't work anymore.

Maybe we could have some grouping or clustering in the alerts panel in the future.
For example I would prefer to see alerts raised by the linter first, instead of "this line is not covered by tests".

[audreyality]

unfortunately it looks like pressing a to hide them doesn't work anymore.

When this feature comes back, it'd be nice if hiding the annotations also stopped them from being added to the clipboard when copying code.

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. We are planning to restore the ability to use a to hide annotations.

[mccrearyp]

@willsmythe any update on when this is getting added?

[jsync-swirlds]

In addition to using a to hide annotations, can we have a global (user) setting to hide annotations by default?
Having to tap a (which does not always work correctly, particularly for large diffs) for every PR in repos that overuse annotations (a distressingly common practice that makes review a painful chore) is irritating and we're still left with (often) dozens of files that now have no visible change because some irrelevant annotation happened to touch that unchanged file.

[mccrearyp]

Are you not planning on adding this feature back anymore? Did you forget about it? Do you need help? If you need the code here is what I was able to do to add this feature from my browser console:

document.addEventListener('keydown', (e) => {
  if (e.key === 'a' || e.key === 'A') {
    document.querySelectorAll('.InlineMarkers-module__markersWrapper--Fw1hl').forEach(el => {
      el.style.display = el.style.display === 'none' ? '' : 'none';
    });
  }
});

[reecefenwick]

I would love to see the file tree sorted alphabetically with folders on top, then files. It is quite jarring to have changed files in the middle of folders when viewing the file tree currently.

Example of current state

App.tsx
components/
hooks/
index.ts
styles/
utils.ts

Example of desired state

components/
hooks/
styles/
App.tsx
index.ts
utils.ts

This would mirror how the majority of developers view the code in their IDE

[franzliedke]

Indeed, files below would also be consistent with GitHub's own repo tree view.

[warp10]

I see the value in being consistent with the repo’s tree view; nevertheless, having files listed first can have some interesting use cases. For example, if a PR includes a changelog file or a “manifest,” listing files first would make it one of the first (often the very first) files shown, which I think is nice when reviewing code. In my opinion, that would greatly help the review process. Just my two cents.

[parasyte]

I recommend sorting the same way as git diff-tree, which is what I think the old view did.

$ git diff-tree -r ..main
:100644 100644 d68e1befa16c82c562359a15a283a838d72b0727 e24eac8e828629741b34632e9ef2493a9a95d753 M      src/cryptosuite.rs
:000000 100644 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 9ad4b1337b54bf28686cf4becccac13124fe6747 A      src/cryptosuite/bip340_jcs.rs
:000000 100644 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 ab474845d58506540e0ac7e6f0e287770efa1b41 A      src/cryptosuite/bip340_rdfc.rs
:000000 100644 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 92337d2e16e7ec1f1d2ebc0836773c2099538a1d A      src/cryptosuite/transformation.rs
:000000 100644 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 fa9ba63738d7b46f5f4647deb01328f6b6981777 A      src/cryptosuite/utils.rs
:100644 100644 f016785749ea50aeb255c80d1a08c1f53b108f6e cd40229a1055c0bd102c6f47318b0d874ab83610 M      src/document.rs
:100644 100644 8b798f1b9f21f3699cdd399939664e9ef4744a8d e2de154c3a730a5b055d6e944e0b8adb98e26f57 M      src/update.rs
:100644 100644 8c80fd426222a68987e2938d37549005bc9db2a0 9c98405bb3803c789dd49a23ca291f2fd9b774cd M      src/zcap/proof.rs

Old view:

New view:

[richard-rance]

Most tools put the folders first but I wish the standard was files first.

The files in a folder typically describe its contents. For example READMEs, Changelogs, manifests, public functions/interfaces. The sub folders contain the implementation details. I would like to read those first when reviewing a PR (or writing code).

That lets me see if their description makes sense to someone who does not know the internal implementation details. Then I can drill into the sub folders that contain the described implementation to see if they match.

It also helps for languages, like golang, that have a vendor folder containing a copy of all dependencies. It would end up at the end of the PR which is perfect since I basically ignore it when doing a review. Right now I have to scroll past all the vendor files to get to the top level files. That can lead to them being missed.

[sethrh]

This would mirror how the majority of developers view the code in their IDE

[Citation needed.]

I'd prefer the ordering stay the way it was. But developers are an opinionated bunch, so if this is going to change there should be a way to set preferences. Besides, there are also other options besides just alphabetical and alphabetical by folder that might be useful, such as eliminating the tree view altogether and just showing file paths or even just file names.

[Nilomiranda]

I don't see the option to comment on the file itself, only on specific lines.

Some files just get stuck into a loading state, like this one:

The comments tab is really nice, I like being able to filter comments by author, makes it much easier to navigate the reviews and attend to the requested changes or overall feedback.

[iifeiss780-wq]

App.tsx

components/
hooks/
index.ts
styles/
utils.ts

[ia0-review]

Should there be a separate thread for the "loading state" issue? I'm afraid this might be buried because the "comment on file" issue has been fixed.

[adcoelho]

This is still happening for me when selecting "Files owned by me". They don't load, and I am unable to review. Any known workaround?

[glureau]

Workaround I've just found, go back to old experience, then load again the new experience.

[shirmetomotion]

I like being able to filter comments by author, makes it much easier to navigate the reviews and attend to the requested changes or overall feedback.
I would love that too! But it currently doesn't work :(
The filter does nothing

[jieyouxu]

Hi, I would like to play around with this, but I'm not seeing the opt-in mentioned in

You can opt in to the public preview from any pull request via “✨Try the new experience” in the upper-right corner. You can return to the classic view by clicking the “switch back” link.

Am I missing something?

[imanmahjoubi]

We are rolling this out to users slowly, you should be able to see it soon 🎉

[margaret-lin]

The tab for Ask Copilot seems to be missing, also when hovering over lines.

[rr-jimmy-multani]

I'd prefer that this button stay since it's related to the PR and its changes.

[daira]

Feature request: allow people who object to AI (and there are many of us) to turn it off, completely, without the risk of accidentally using it by some misclick or dark pattern.

[3nprob]

Bug: This button is visible even if Copilot is fully disabled in user settings.

[Biglulux]

Asking Copilot to summarize the PR is important to my workflow, so I would like the Ask Copilot button to return to the Files Changed page as well. An alternative could be allowing non-main branch files to be attached to regular Copilot chat, since currently only files on the main branch for all repos can be attached.

[kanonji]

Because my team is understaffed, I often have to review PRs that use languages, frameworks, or libraries I am not very familiar with.
For that reason, I rely heavily on "Ask Copilot about this file-diff" (the line-level Copilot actions).
Even if I can understand the overall design and structure, I do not know the fine-grained syntax or how specific library methods behave.

With the current "Files Changed" view, I can use "Ask Copilot about this file-diff" right away, but in the new view it takes 3 clicks.
If I use it 10 times in a single PR, that is 10 clicks vs. 30 clicks.
If I review 10 PRs, that becomes 100 clicks vs. 300 clicks.

For me, the version where I can use "Ask Copilot about this file-diff" with a single click is clearly better.

[njvrzm]

Not sure if this is the sort of feedback you're after, but the :shipit: emoji does not preview in the review textbox in the new version 😅 . It does show up correctly in the preview.

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. We'll address.

[cmargonis]

On the topic of emojis, I really liked that I could type e.g. :idea and it would suggest the 💡 emoji. It would be great if this functionality were preserved (or even expanded upon 🙏 )

[KeithYeh]

1. I can't find "comment on this file" button in new UI

Old UI

2. How to hide alerts? I can toggle alerts by pressing "A" in old UI

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. Both are known issues we're tracking.

[airvision-tw]

Indeed! I am also missing this functionality in the new view.

[cristinadoroftei]

True, I use the "comment on this file" feature quite often and I switched to the old view just because it's missing on the new one 😿

[Smolyan91]

+

[xmfcx]

How to hide alerts? I can toggle alerts by pressing "A" in old UI

This is very important for me.

[julioag-rmd]

On the Files changed tab I can only see 19 files out of 66. Why?

[mdfox20]

Also switched back to the old UI because of this! I almost always open PRs from the email link, so this is a completely breaking bug for me.

[ExtAnimal]

I'm only seeing ONE.

One at a time. I have to open the directory sidebar and click on each file or click the next/prev file buttons.

Whoever did this should be fired.

[bashar-qassis]

to be fair, they are showing an explicit notice, so it seems rather intentional

[tatosjb]

to be fair, they are showing an explicit notice, so it seems rather intentional

In that case they should fire who made this decision

[seriouslysean]

I agree with some of the previous comments. Seeing one file at a time is untenable when doing PR, I really need the option to see them all and scroll through for a seamless experience. There are many cases where a couple files may be related and it's useful to see them and flit between them.

[vengut]

I used to be able to click on a useful link to see the submodule diff in PRs but now its just plain text.
Old:

New:

Could we have that back pls?

[cdunford]

👍 any of the above; missing being able to see what changed; I have to flip back to do the old experience to do it

[Lachy-Antero]

Our release process heavily relies on the ability to click through to see the commit diff of submodules. Will be very sad to see this go.

[hsl0]

I want to see that nice summary of changes for non-GitHub hosted submodules, too.

[jlc6]

I would like to be able to see which commit I’m starting from and which one I’m going to in the changed submodules, as the old interface used to show.

[AminHeidaridahoee]

I also want to see the submodule commitId change in the file preview, it is necessary for our code review

[BE-Code]

It doesn't always seem to remember if hide whitespace was turned on.

[Scramle]

Currently, I think the toggle is just backwards. "Hide whitespace" turned on sets the query param to ?w=1, and turning it of sets it to ?w=0. Expected behaviour should be the other way around. So in @rmartins0's case, that link works as it should, as w=1 shows whitespaces and w=0 hides them.

[shahmir-oscilar]

I believe i was able to reproduce this. See steps at: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/163932#discussioncomment-13915305

[FeBe95]

Related: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/163932#discussioncomment-14012281

[warwick-kiwibank]

A certain order of the URL parameters triggers this bug. This works:
.../files?w=1&file-filters%5B%5D=.yml&file-filters%5B%5D=.tf

But if I put the hide-whitespace parameter after the file-filter parameters, it doesn't work:
.../files?file-filters%5B%5D=.yml&file-filters%5B%5D=.tf&w=1

The parameters are added to the URL in the order of selecting the options in the GUI. So, to avoid the bug, you need to show/hide whitespace, then apply file filters.

The old UI works as expected.

[Bangkah]

Same issue here on Win 11 + Edge 124. Worked after disabling “XYZ” flag. Thanks for the workaround!

[mrm-david]

I have several issues with the new experience

1. resolving a thread sometimes fails
2. Filtering out resolved threads, I still see them (or some of them ?)
3. Unable to reply to a thread in the panel, actually clicking on either "no replies" or "x replies" goes nowhere

[SolderSyntax]

These are all major points for PRs with lots of comments/threads.

[ceritium]

This button is just noise

[pf-paul]

I disagree. The first button allows you to tell instantly (i.e. without needing to scroll down to the bottom) whether or not a PR has enough approvals to merge, and then quickly go to merge it. Likewise, if there are merge conflicts or changes requested you can tell immediately as soon as the page loads, and clicking the button will take you to the details. In my opinion, this is an excellent addition to the UX.

The second button is perhaps less commonly used, but still useful, especially for small PRs where the checkout process is quick.

[ceritium]

@pf-paul, it is only true if your workflow depends on those restrictions, otherwise, it is just a shortcut that ignores the comments.

[jsoref]

The Paste, drop, or click to add files button overflows on mobile:

Chrome on Google Pixel 8a

[Jimmar]

my code reviews sometimes lose styling, check this gif for example

sometimes when I try to edit an existing comment, it just loses all the styling

[jonel-skand]

Doesn't jump into the diff. So useless!!!

[Noah-Houghton]

Agreed! This would be awesome if it worked - or, even better, if I could reply right there by clicking the 'no replies' button. Annoyingly since this doesn't work, I can't actually respond to some comments in a PR I'm working on since the comment is only visible in the side panel and not in the diff view (for some strange reason).

[Muhammadwaqaspk]

Hi @imanmahjoubi and team,

I've been following this thread and testing the new Files Changed experience extensively. Here are my consolidated findings:

Critical Issues (Blocking my workflow):

1. Pending comments disappear when switching tabs - This is a regression from classic view. Steps:

   • Start review, add pending comment
   • Switch to Conversation tab
   • Return to Files Changed → comment gone from inline view (still in sidebar but uneditable)

2. "A" key to hide annotations not working - Essential for large PRs with many lint warnings. Currently forced to use browser console workaround.

3. Single file mode default for large PRs - Seeing "Only showing 1 file" message breaks my review flow. I need to see cross-file relationships.

Accessibility concerns:

• Line-level comment indicators not announced to screen readers (NVDA/JAWS)
• No keyboard shortcut to add suggestions (Ctrl+G removed)

What I actually like:

• Commenting on unchanged lines is game-changing for context
• File tree with comment indicators helps navigation
• Draft comments persistence (no more lost work on accidental refresh)

Request: Can we get a timeline for fixing the pending comment bug? It's been reported multiple times in this thread.

Also +1 to @serhii-surazhskyi-gl's point about showing more than 40 comments inline - this limit hurts large reviews.

Thanks for the continuous updates!

[jrose-signal]

Using Up and Down to scroll through lines of the diff makes sense…but right now that's also catching the native Cmd-Up event of "scroll to top of page". (Please don't implement that directly, just avoid swallowing Up and Down if there are modifiers set.)

[pf-paul]

+100 on this. I (try to) use Ctrl+Home very often to get back to the top so that I can open the review panel or switch to the Conversation tab. I don't have a need for the line-by-line keyboard navigation and find it rather irritating when it hijacks my keystrokes.

How about assigning the Escape key to de-focus the code (i.e. remove the blue outline) and allow the normal page navigation keys to work again? Or even better, allow the keyboard navigation to be disabled entirely via a Settings toggle for those who don't need/want it.

[phips28]

I love the new button and sidebar to merge without going to Conversation first, scroll down, ...

But: after I merge, the sidebar closes in 50% of cases before I can "delete the branch" - looks like some kind of reload in the BG that closes the sidebar. (also on browser focus out/in the sidebar closes)
Keep it open until I click outside or X.

[danielb987]

There is a bug in the new view. When a file has only whitespace changes, the changes are not shown. Instead the text Whitespace-only changes. is shown, despite having Hide whitespace unchecked. I have had on several occasions the need to show the whitespace changes, so this must be fixed.

[avshalomt2]

Wrong HTML sanitation

There's a bug in rendering comments with HTML in them - HTML is removed, instead of being escaped (using < and >).
When my comment looks like

Use <Component />? This is better

🟥 Due to some HTML sanitation, it's being viewed as

Use ? This is better

(I checked the actual rendered HTML, it is Use ? This is better).

✅ Using inline code renders just fine:

Use `<Component />`? This is better

[pf-paul]

My preference for Hide Whitespace is no longer being remembered. I now have to select the option from the upper-right menu for every PR.

[BrandonDR]

nit: I am used to the CTRL+ENTER to confirm PR title changes, I see just Enter works, but could we get support for Enter and CTRL+Enter?

[KaurKadakWise]

Please make file filters less hidden, shouldn't be hidden behind a sidepanel.

[yossiz-philips]

yes, took me forever to find the "only files owned by me" filter

[vsaarinen]

There seems to be a bug in the new view that doesn't allow me to approve PRs even though I should have rights. The "Approve" and "Request changes" options are disabled. I was able to approve the PR by switching to the old view.

It might be related to the fact that the PR has a very large diff, resulting in the "optimized" view for large PRs being used.

[jcmuel]

In Firefox on macOS, clicking on the "Jump to the comment in the diff" button of a resolved comment in the "Comments" window in the "Files Changed" tab in a PR, doesn't have any effect except for closing the "Comments" window. The focus does not "jump to the comment in the diff".

Thumbs up, if anyone has the same problem.

[XLTechie]

Just experienced that on Firefox under Windows, a couple days ago.