Improved pull request merge experience (public preview) feedback

[willsmythe]

Important

• This new experience is rolling out gradually and is not available to everyone yet.
• When it's available to you, a link will appear below the current merge experience on the PR page.
• See Known issues 👇 for latest on known bugs and feature parity gaps.

Thanks ❤️ and happy previewing!

About the new experience

To help you better understand the state of your pull request and get it merged faster, the merge experience on the pull request page has been improved! This experience is currently in public preview.

What's new

We've maintained the familiar look of the existing merge experience while incorporating several usability improvements:

• Checks grouped by status: checks are now grouped by status with failing checks prioritized at the top of the list, making it easier to identify issues that need attention
• Checks ordered alphabetically: status checks are now ordered alphabetically to make it easier to find a specific check
• Commit metadata validation: errors from failing commit metadata rules (like non-compliant commit messages) can now be corrected and retried
• Improved accessibility: consistent keyboard navigation, focus management, and landmarks help make the experience more accessible to everyone

Try it out

Once available, you will see a Try the new merge experience link below the merge box on the pull request page:

Click it to switch to the improved experience. A link is also available for easily switching back to the existing experience. You can also toggle the experience via the feature preview dialog.

🔴 🔴 🔴 Known issues 🔴 🔴 🔴

You will run into some bugs and missing features (let us know when you do if not listed here).

Bugs

1. IMPORTANT: in certain cases, an incorrect commit author email address will be shown when confirming merge or a different email address will be used from what's displayed
2. Misalignment/wonkiness with check status icon (Safari-only)
3. Clicking the Resolve conflicts button results in a 404/Not Found in certain cases
4. Bypass checkbox not visible / user blocked from merging with The base branch does not accept merge commits.
5. Squash and auto-merge button (to enable auto-merge) is too easily confused for Squash and merge (to directly merge) because of similar text and styling *FIX IN PROGRESS
6. Documentation URLs appear as text and are not clickable

Recently fixed

• FIXED 2024-11-09: Enabling auto-merge fails with a "not found" error
• FIXED 2024-11-12: Admin bypass checkbox not always appearing preventing users from bypassing merge requirements
• FIXED 2024-11-14: Styling of the Delete branch button is sometimes missing (fixed by reloading the page)
• FIXED 2024-11-22: The browser tab icon (favicon) does not currently reflect the pull request's merge status
• FIXED 2024-11-25: A page refresh is sometimes required to show latest status and correct actions/buttons (like after all checks have completed)
• FIXED 2024-11-25: Clicking Delete branch / Restore branch fails with a Couldn't update branch message (likely occurs only in PRs from forks)
• SUPPORTED: Reviews can be dismissed and re-requested
• SUPPORTED: Command line instructions are missing
• FIXEX: Restore branch button is easily confused for Delete branch (we moved the Restore branch button out of the new merge experience so the only button that will appear here is Delete branch)
• FIXED: Use natural/logical ordering for status checks to help with numeric matrix build ordering

Missing features

Features currently missing, but are coming:

• Approving GitHub Actions workflows
• Selecting a different commit author email when merging
• Status check durations (showing how long a check has been running / took to run)
• Add your review action in the Reviewers section (workaround: navigate to the Files Changed tab and click Review changes)

Looking for feedback 🔈 🔈

• Collapse the grouping of "passing" checks by default
• Show the grouping of "in progress" status checks above the grouping of "pending"
• In the current experience, the confirmation form (which appears after clicking "merge") replaces the entire merge experience, but is simply appended in the new experience. Like? Some options:
  • Replicate the behavior of the current experience?
  • Open a dialog?

Feedback

We want to hear from you! Post your comments, questions, likes, and dislikes below.

[codeithuman]

Where is the "Merge without waiting for requirements to be met (bypass branch protections)" checkbox?

Old

New

[Rockyspade]

Where is the "Merge without waiting for requirements to be met (bypass branch protections)" checkbox?

Old

New

[laurmaedje]

@willsmythe It's still not working for me.

New:

Old:

[purajit]

Not working for me either when I first create a draft and then mark it ready for review (which is my default process)

[joanna2028]

EVERYTHING is OK but i'm blocked to merge it

FIX IT @willsmythe

[joanna2028]

twitter/the-algorithm#14657

twitter/the-algorithm#14658

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback / write-up. Definitely agree. This check box appears for some users in some scenarios, but there's clearly a bug here where it's not appearing for everyone. We're investigating.

[seesharprun]

I like this feature so far, but the only transient bug I've seen is sometimes the checks show up fine while they are processing, but once all checks have passed, they all disappear. If you select the arrow to expand, it shows an empty list. I need to refresh the browser to see the passing checks.

Again, just a small client-side issue that I'm seeing in Edge 130.0.2849.68

[willsmythe]

Thanks for reporting. If you (or anyone else) is able (and comfortable) to capture a quick video and include here as a reply, please do!

If you select the arrow to expand

Are you referring to the caret 1) on the right side of the merge box, or 2) next to "X successful checks"?

[willsmythe]

I added this issue to the Known issues > Bugs section in the description above. Check there for updates, and to see other issues we're tracking.

[chamini2]

Again, just a small client-side issue that I'm seeing in Edge 130.0.2849.68

for a second I thought you commented your IP

[jessicaDura]

again non diversitalizing materials the only truely honest traite available to be earned.

[cipacera]

Do you find it helpful to record and report bugs like this for quicker resolution?

[thomas-bc]

The "view command line instructions" can be handy. It used to be a clickable element that extends to show CLI commands. It is not anymore. Could be good to add back in?

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. This is coming! See the Known issues > Feature gaps list above.

[Tilka]

The second command of Step 1 points to the wrong repository. It should point to the repo of the branch being merged, not the repo of the branch it's being merged into. The instructions of the "classic merge experience" are correct.

[mno-ly]

Do you think bringing back the 'view command line instructions' feature would be helpful for the process?

[tzing]

The new look on that PR successfully merged message confused me.

Its appearance is quite similar to the message of you can click this button to delete the branch on the classic pane. This look makes me wonder if the auto delete branch feature is broken.

[caarlos0]

same here... thought it didn't delete the branch, and clicked restore 🤦🏻

[jonkoops]

This ha 100% tripped me up multiple times, the classic merge experience does this much better.

[DingGGu]

I think this feedback is deployed now.

[richardhj]

@willsmythe It shows "...has been merged and deleted" (see above) to me but my branch is protected (and if it would have been deleted in fact, it would be a disaster because of deployment).

[jonathan-bird]

@richardhj +1 here too

[kaoths]

---

The "Delete branch" button CSS/style sometimes doesn't load.
This sometimes appears after merging a PR.
It does not affect any functionalities. Just the visual issue, reloading the page fixes it.

[tarilabs]

Same problem, google chrome on Mac

[a-stankevich]

Same happens occasionally in Firefox, Windows

[kaoths]

Sorry for late reply, I'm seeing this on Arc browser.

[willsmythe]

This should be resolved now. If anyone is still experiencing this, let us know!

[Ivnfrolov13]

yes

[getchoo]

Here is the new experience on a PR with an approval from a reviewer without write access, that has also passed all CI:

Displaying red around this feels a bit odd to me. My first thought when I see it is that CI has failed, changes have been requested, or maybe that there are required approvals/checks still being waited on? (None of these are the case in this repository, which is nixpkgs)

In comparison, the classic merge experience has a green accent:

(I also noticed the new experience shows the approval of the reviewer w/o write access. This is an awesome addition for nixpkgs, so thanks!)

The use of green lets a PR author or committer know at a glance that it should be good to merge. I'd much rather keep this behavior :)

[BhaaLseN]

Adding my +1 here. Having both the symbol and the border red when nothing else inside the box is red is feels weird, as if there is something to do for someone to address an issue. As someone that simply doesn't have merge permissions, the old experience had it green (because everything's fine, no checks failed, no reviews blocking it) The only thing that "blocks" anything is me not having merge permissions.

And it feels odd to force the red border with the previous suggestions of adding a failed thing in there just to have more red.

I always saw that box at the end as "PR status (as far as the project is concerned)" and not "PR status (as far as I'm concerned)". And if someone can merge it no problem, then it should be green in my head (even if I can't merge it).

I do see some value in making this different for the PR author if it adds value for them, but as project member doing reviews I don't see the added value of bringing something to my attention in a rather distracting way that I both know of and can't do anything about myself.

[thaJeztah]

I just enabled the new view, and also adding my "+1" here. The red border and red "PR icon" is overshadowing the status of checks, and when looking it's easy to consider it "CI failed", whereas the status is more "pending review" (which would be true for most PRs that are not merged yet).

I love the new view for grouping checks by status, which is gonna be a huge time-saver for finding that "one" failed check in a list of 160 other checks, but this part is a regression and making it much harder to spot if a PR is failing CI.

Here's a before/after (note the "PR" icon is grey, which at least makes it look less as "failing";

[ShalokShalom]

Sorry, only saw this now. https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/143787#discussioncomment-11460074

[daveisfera]

Saw this as well and was confused about what was broken with my PR, but then realized that it was fine and the new UI just shows this as red for some reason

[evans-jahja-paypay]

A red merge button is easily confused with "Closed PR", so now it has dual meaning: closed and blocked. I think if we want to use another color, it should be something else that is unused.

[asilbek-ismoilov]

Very good

[khoatranthanh]

[willsmythe]

Thanks for reporting. We're planning to move the Restore branch button (see Known issues > Planned changes). Regarding the missing styling, this is something we're tracking for the Delete branch button too (see Known issues > Bugs).

[willsmythe]

This should be fixed now.

[halamix2]

"Enable auto-merge" button is replaced with "Squash and auto-merge" which is broken:
Instead of marking the PR to be auto-merged it simply displays "Not Found" error below the button

Console logs just displays 404 on POST to https://github.com/<org>/<repo>/pull/531/page_data/enable_auto_merge

[willsmythe]

Thanks for reporting. We're investigating.

[willsmythe]

The team is reviewing a fix for this.

[willsmythe]

A fix for this problem rolled out on Friday! 🎉

Let us know if you're still seeing this problem.

[halamix2]

It's fixed now, thanks <3

[leoskyrocker]

it's buggy and requires a page refresh before the merge button works even when all the checks are already passing, overall it feels less real time than before

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. Definitely a problem. We're investigating.

[willsmythe]

Are there any required status checks? Or just optional? Or a mix?

[dg6862]

I have the same issue. We have several optional checks and one required.

[willsmythe]

A fix is underway for this. Should deploy by early next week.

[jcviljoen]

Hey Will 👋. I ran into a simpler case where, if you merge the base branch and the checks pass, the "enable auto merge" button stays visible until you refresh. Seemed like an extension to this feedback 🙌.

Great update btw! 🚀

[Lamparter]

Merge is not an allowed merge method in this repository.
You're not authorized to push to this branch. Visit https://docs.github.com/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/managing-protected-branches/about-protected-branches for more information.

files-community/Files#16445

Sorry for the oversized screenshot! I noticed the text merge is not an allowed merge method in this repository in a repository I don't control - I'm assuming this isn't intended and so reporting it here.

[jsoref]

The "Merge is not an allowed merge method in this repository." part of argoproj/argo-cd#21064:

Merging is blocked
Merge is not an allowed merge method in this repository.
1 review requesting changes by reviewers with write access.

definitely doesn't make sense.

[kennytv]

I like that the list of checks is grouped collapsed now, though when expanding it, I'd want all of them to be opened by default, including successful checks. In the example below, it currently only expands skipped checks:

I also feel like the red outline for awaiting reviews is a bit too aggressive, especially when coupled with removing so much green (no full checkmark as well as including skipped checks as gray in the outline).

[spytheman]

I do not want the list of checks to expand like that - I have over 40 jobs, and expanding just the section I clicked on, is exactly as it should be.

If I want to see/check the successful ones, I can just click on them.

[qmonnet]

While it probably makes sense for most users to collapse the list of checks, I've a high screen and my own preference is also to have all checks expanded to glance at the full list at once. I'd appreciate if there were opt-in options to 1) expand all lists, including successful checks, and 2) remove the max-height for the whole merge box (which some folks currently do by injecting custom CSS).

[nicoburns]

The checks are in a scroll view anyway, so I don't think there's any advantage to having the successful checks collapsed? If you don't want to see them then don't scroll down to them...

[spytheman]

Checks grouped by status: checks are now grouped by status with failing checks prioritized at the top of the list, making it easier to identify issues that need attention

THANK YOU 🙇🏻‍♂️ ❤️ 🥳 !

[spytheman]

I have a repository that has over 40 jobs that are commonly running and sometimes depending on what is changed, that can grow up to 76. Previously I had to scroll/hunt for the failing jobs A LOT.
The improvement in this alone, made my daily Github experience a lot better 🥳 .

[Lukeghenco]

We are glad to hear about this. GitHub developers have infinitely more than 76 on many of our repos (as do a ton of larger repositories using GitHub), so this was something we felt would really help the DX. Thank you for the feedback.

[joshhunt]

Bringing failing checks to the top is a huge win. Thanks for this 🙌

[genintho]

Checks ordered alphabetically: status checks are now ordered alphabetically to make it easier to find a specific check

The sorting is braking. little bit when using matrix with numbers.

[willsmythe]

Totally agree. We have an internal issue tracking this. I'll add it to the list of Known issues > Planned changes above.

[willsmythe]

@genintho - can you give this another try? We rolled out a fix today to order status checks more logically.

[genintho]

@willsmythe it looks fixed! Thank you!

[ilyapoz]

Finally!!!
Guys, thank you very much for this. You saved a little part of me that spends years scrolling the tests list to find the one failing. This little soul is liberated and sings praises to everyone involved in this initiative.

[onairmarc]

I like the update, the only thing I wish was present was if the workflow triggered additional commits, that the workflow would still appear with the current status in the merge box. We have workflows that apply code style rules in CI and every time the code is auto-formatting, the runner commits the code and ignores that commit in the git blame. These additional commits cause the workflow status to not appear in the merge box. This is true for the old and new merge box experiences.

[MikeBellika]

output.mov

I think there's a bug with regex patterns. In this video you can see that it fails in the new merge experience but succeeds in the old one. The regex does match. There's also no way to bypass the check.

[azu]

📝 This is a known issue listed under “Missing features”(and upcoming), but I unintentionally merged a PR that did not pass CI, so I am writing a comment as a reminder.
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/143787#discussion-7435988

The new design does not appear to show “Approve and Run”.
I almost merged the PR even though the CI was not passed.

Classic Design:

CI status is yellow, this is correct.

New Design:

CI status is green, but this is incorrect.

e.g. azu/kuromojin#15

[ReenigneArcher]

You may want to setup required status checks in branch protection rules.

[dimaqq]

That's a good idea, however in my case (below), I'm not allowed to do that.

My privilege level is such that I can't see repo "settings" but I can "approve and run" github actions.

The new UI cannot be used for external PRs in my project.

I suppose, given enough advance notice, it's possible to force legacy repo admins to update their settings though, ultimately not a deal-breaker, just hard to test it out.

[shaedrich]

There's a wording mismatch: The group is named "pending", while each check's status is reported as "queued". You probably want both to read "pending":

[quicksketch]

The new commit message box does not seem to support auto-complete @ mentions. We use this heavily for commit credits:

Though if you really wanted to swing for the fences, it would be much more useful if the autocomplete could assembled additional Co-authored-by: lines via autocomplete. I always want to add better attribution to commits but finding the preferred names and email addresses of people is impossible.

[shaedrich]

Maybe, this could also be a slash command 🤔

Version 1:

Version 2:

Version 3:

[quicksketch]

@shaedrich That would indeed be amazing. The key thing is we need to be able to manually include people (through @ mentions or otherwise) that aren't in the pull request commits, since we want to be able to credit code reviewers, the issue reporter, QA feedback... all of which we consider to have helped having a hand in authoring the commit.

But related to slash commands: they don't seem to exist on either the new or old commit message UI.

[shaedrich]

Slash commands are currently a feature—you probably didn't enable them yet

Would additional git trailers or git notes help you?

The slash commands could probably be expanded to included others involved in the PR (through the PR itself or linked issues and such). There also could be specialized at-mentions (similar to @me in the new issue overview page search) like @reviewers, @issuer, etc. 🤔

[AlpinDale]

After CI checks pass, the "checking for automatic merge" (paraphrasing here) thing spins indefinitely until you reload the page.

[Mothblocks]

The new lighter font really is a lot harder for me to read. I have astigmatism, I don't know if it has to do with that, but I feel the need to squint more.

[dimaqq]

Old:

New:

Where's "Approve and run" button?

[dimaqq]

For historical reasons, only a bot merges PRs in this repo.
I would comment /merge on someone else's or my PR and the bot will take it from there (check approvals, validate commit messages, run tests, etc. and finally merge).

[malwarebo]

Almost invisible CI icon in dark mode makes it hard to differentiate between different types of workflows.

[AndrewEastwood]

looks good, but I do have a quick question... on my branch-list the diff commit-number does not show real diff between parent branch, but rather the default one... is there any way to show it properly?

[matthiasr]

A small thing, but it breaks my workflow: when the check name is a link, I can no longer copy a string out of the middle. I use this occasionally with Atlantis – we have a repository with many Terraform environments, and sometimes I need to apply one before the others. Atlantis reports the plan stage as atlantis/plan: path/to/environment/default and I need to pass the path/to/environment to atlantis apply -d. In the old layout, I can copy it out, saving me some manual typing, while in the new one (in Chrome) that tries to drag the link somewhere.

[Kielek]

There is no information about workflows waiting for approvals, eg. 2 workflows awaiting approval

[valters]

the "new" merge experience seems to not auto-update itself once some check passes or becomes available. I had to refresh the whole page to get the "squash and merge" button to show up: this is a deal breaker for me.

the reason why the button is not available is much clearer in current ("old") experience. I will be sticking with the current (classic) experience for the time being. In new experience it is very hard to determine real reason why the merge check is not passing. We have bunch of gates, some are required, some optional, and there is one bot that checks if there are more eyes on PR (and somebody is not just approving their own changes). the bot check not passing blocks the merge: in classic experience it is very clear that it does, and in new experience the info seems somehow buried.

[dannywillems]

No "Approve and Run" when there is an external contributor.