New pull request overview page in public preview 🚀

[ebndev]

On a long pull request, checking what’s blocking often means scrolling past dozens of comments and timeline events just to reach the merge box. And once you’re there, you still need to work out what to do next. As people need to review more and more pull requests, time spent scrolling adds up. So we’ve begun to rethink the entire experience, beginning with addressing a familiar challenge: finding what’s blocking progress and determining what to do next.

Today, we’re introducing the Overview page as an opt-in public preview, with rollout continuing through the weekend. It brings merge status and next available actions to the top of the page in a compact readiness summary. It’s the first step toward making pull requests easier to follow as code, conversations, and reviews evolve.

The merge box, distilled

We’re starting with the merge box, the place developers go to see whether a pull request can move forward. Rather than just moving it higher, we’ve also redesigned it to show the same information in less than half the space.

1. Explore the supporting signals: A compact view of checks, comments, and approvals keeps the context nearby without making every detail compete for attention.
2. Address what’s blocking: Take action to move the pull request forward, such as updating your branch.
3. See if it’s ready to merge: Check merge readiness and merge when requirements are met.

Start with the summary, then follow the detail that matters to your next step (e.g., get to failing checks, see who still needs to approve, or open the relevant comments).

Keep your place. Focus your attention.

This first preview also introduces more ways to catch up on activity and focus the conversation so you can spend less time finding your place.

1. Narrow the conversation: Filter for unresolved conversations or comments you wrote to find open questions or follow up on your feedback.
2. Read the latest comments first: Sort comments from newest to oldest instead of starting with the earliest discussion.
3. Catch up on activity: Use the summary in the upper-right to find review comments, review requests, and other updates.

You can also mark a draft ready for review or close a pull request from the header, with available actions depending on your permissions.

Try the new overview

To join, select the ✨ Try the Overview page button in the header. We’re opening this preview early so you can try the new direction on your own pull requests and help shape what comes next. You can use the same menu to return to the classic overview during the preview.

🌟 Help shape what comes next

This preview is very much a starting point, not the finished pull request experience. Try it on your next pull request. What is easier to find? Where do you still lose context? What sends you back to the classic overview?

Join the discussion and leave feedback in the comments below!

[simon-abbott]

I have a few pieces of feedback, broken out here to be easier to respond to. I'd also be happy to split this into multiple comments if that would be easier to work with.

Firstly, I like the redesign of the merge box and moving it to the top. Being able to see the status at a glance without having to scroll, no matter how active the PR is, is a huge win.

On the other hand, I don't like the redesign of the rest of the page as much, for a few reasons. Here they are in order of least-to-most blocking for my workflow:

I find newest-first sorting really hard to read (I'm in full support of having it be an option, and thank you for letting us change it back, but I think it's an odd default).

The PR body is no longer in a box, which is weird. Every other comment on GitHub, including issues, discussions, and other comments on the redesigned overview, follows the same display format, including a background color and/or a border. The new borderless design of the description feels out of place, like it fell out of its box. I can work past this, but it does make the page harder for me to read quickly, which is the opposite of the stated design goals. I see this was resolved, thank you!

The review status icons on comments are hard to see. The old Conversation view had big prominent checks and Xs making it really easy to see at a glance. This new design makes them much smaller and easier to miss. Approvals, review requests, review comments, and regular comments all look the same except for a tiny badge next to the user's profile picture (which is easy to miss) and a changed label next to the date (which is also easy to miss). I would love to see that information get much more glanceable. Seems the review status icons being that small was a bug. I'd still like them to be even more prominent if possible, but I can at least see them now.

And finally the biggest issue for me is the split timelines. I use the activity timeline a lot to see what has actually happened to a PR since I last reviewed it, especially for force pushes, so having that information inline with the review and comment history is important to my workflow. Splitting them out means that now if I want to see what happened since I last reviewed I need to manually filter the activity list in my head. Additionally, there is no longer an easy link to view a force push's diff, which is a view I use extremely frequently due to our PR process.

[madsbolaris]

Yes! Thank you for taking the time to write out the feedback. We'll def review internally tomorrow

[madsbolaris]

In the meantime, @simon-abbott , besides force pushes, are there other pieces of information you feel is missing from the overview page that used to be in the timeline?

I'm also curious, for something like force pushes, are you primarily interested in the last force push? (e.g., when it happened?) Or do you need to see any/all force pushes since the last time you reviewed it?

[j0k3r]

I agree about the ability to view force pushes diff.
I'm more for the second option you mentioned @madsbolaris

[madsbolaris]

Thanks!

[simon-abbott]

Besides force pushes, are there other pieces of information you feel is missing from the overview page that used to be in the timeline?

Not that I'm currently aware of. Though I think an easy fix is adding a toggle (or better yet, options) for inline timeline events. That way people who care about things like force pushes, branch changes, title renames, etc. can see those, and the people who don't care can hide them.

I'm also curious, for something like force pushes, are you primarily interested in the last force push? (e.g., when it happened?) Or do you need to see any/all force pushes since the last time you reviewed it?

We use standard merge commits and want to have good commit messages, so we use a lot of force pushes. Because of that my typical personal review workflow is:

1. Do a detailed review of the code, leaving comments for everything that needs to be changed
2. Wait for the PR author to make the requested changes
3. Review the diff between then and now to make sure that a) they actually made all the changes I asked for and b) nothing new was added that would be an issue.

I do it this way because it makes re-reviewing a lot easier, since I only need to review what has actually changed since my last review. For example, if a PR adds a new 200-line file that I review and mark as read, then if a future push makes any change to that file (whether it be a one-character typo fix or a full rewrite of the whole thing), the "Files Changed" view behaves the same: it marks the file as having changed. Viewing the actual force push diffs lets me easily see what has changed, so I can quickly see whether or not that change is valid, without having to re-review the entire file from scratch every time.

For that reason, I personally would love to see two options:

1. Links to view each force push's diff
2. A link to view the full diff since the last review

The former (individual diffs) is much more important, as we also sometimes rebase a PR's branch, which can get really noisy if the PR has fallen behind, so having individual diffs lets me easily ignore those.

[mungojam]

This looks like a great improvement. A related thing to that activity pane is on the notifications screen where a new notification for an existing PR doesn't give any indication of what's new, so when there are many notifications, I have no idea which ones have re-requested my review or tagged me in a new comment

[nayuta]

I would like to submit a suggestion regarding color accessibility. While the display appears sufficiently legible in dark mode, the thin bar in light mode may present contrast and readability issues. Adjusting the color or increasing the contrast ratio for light mode would greatly improve accessibility for all users.

[renbaoshuo]

It seems that there is an error in styling?

[madsbolaris]

Yes, that looks like a bug. Thanks for reporting!

[srothgan]

very cool design, i really like it 👍

[chspe]

I don't like it.
I want to read the whole timeline and the comments, in order from oldest (top) to newest (bottom), before I click on "Merge" on the very bottom of the page.
I don't want to have to click to see timeline/merge box at all.

[baev]

Can we get rid of the scroll jump after approving a PR? In 90% of cases, my next action after clicking Approve is to merge, but the merge button is now at the top.

[mfsbo]

I would love if it can show the project fields like iteration and when they change on PR. We manage testing on PR so when it moves from swimlane to swimlane that is visible but other project fields are not.

[Szendvics]

Please keep the diff stat in a fixed position, independent of branch name length, so it's easier to compare stacked PR sizes.

[samuelfullerthomas]

I assume that this is progressively rolling out to users? I've not seen the Try the Overview page yet - keen to have a look 😃

[aryanranderiya]

same, am i missing something? i would really like to try this out

[madsbolaris]

Yes! We expect for it to be fully rolled out by Monday

[Cerbrus]

I just approved a PR made by a colleague, but the default "Unresolved" comment filter does not show said comment:

The "All" filter does show it:

I'd expect approval messages to be shown by default.

[kubo6472]

no frame around the initial message

which check failed here?

[jinder]

It would be useful to be able to pin a comment to the top. There are often comments or bot feedback that get lost in the noise that are important top level content.

[shoowack]

I’d love a "back to top" button 😄 Both in the Overview and in the Changed files sections.

[ctsstc]

I see others with a chevron, I have a lock icon. It's a bit confusing.
I thought it might persist which would have been bad, but for me "locking" it to sit over the PR Body/description seems odd.

[kubo6472]

yes, the lock should move the PR text down, like a sticky thing

[ctsstc]

I miss seeing my stacks, but I know they live under the stack icon at the top now. It seems some people want some stuff hidden while other parts back to visible/where they previously were.

[dominic-baratta-zocdoc]

Its super busy and confusing. Dont force this on people

[rafegoldberg]

minor visual design nits:

center aligned title group feels off with the rest of the layout, and it feels like there's some info duplication going on

[simon-abbott]

One other slight regression for my particular workflow: I miss the "copy branch" button on the sticky header.

[Josh65-2201]

I don't get why there's a need change where everything is and add duplicate places.

One of the reason listed is to see the merge status quicker, but it already at the top in the header. That could also just scroll the page down where the merge status is if the sidebar style it currently uses is an issue. The new design for the merge box could easily just replace the current one in the same position.

Comment sorting could just be a jump to bottom button added to the top of the PR page, sidebar or empty space on the left and right for probably most displays.

Changing the base branch can be easily added to the existing layout where it already shows the branches.

Moving the convert to draft I do think is at a better more obvious place in the new layout and that could easily also be added in the existing layout.

[goaway]

I really dislike the inverted flow of updates and comments. All I want from a PR is a simple presentation of what happened, in the order it happened, in an intuitive presentation - which for me, and I imagine most people, is oldest at the top, newer at the bottom. That's how text reads, that's how timelines are usually presented when presented vertically, that's how most apps present comment threads, etc.

This is a busier UI that manages to present less useful information.