Once you know the hash of the stash commit you dropped, you can apply it as a stash:

git stash apply $stash_hash

Or, you can create a separate branch for it with

git branch recovered $stash_hash

After that, you can do whatever you want with all the normal tools. When you’re done, just blow the branch away.

Finding the hash

If you have only just popped it and the terminal is still open, you will still have the hash value printed by git stash pop on screen (thanks, Dolda).

Otherwise, you can find it using this for Linux, Unix or Git Bash for Windows:

git fsck --no-reflog | awk '/dangling commit/ {print $3}'

...or using PowerShell for Windows:

git fsck --no-reflog | select-string 'dangling commit' | foreach { $_.ToString().Split(" ")[2] }

This will show you all the commits at the tips of your commit graph which are no longer referenced from any branch or tag – every lost commit, including every stash commit you’ve ever created, will be somewhere in that graph.

The easiest way to find the stash commit you want is probably to pass that list to gitk:

gitk --all $( git fsck --no-reflog | awk '/dangling commit/ {print $3}' )

...or see the answer from emragins if using PowerShell for Windows.

This will launch a repository browser showing you every single commit in the repository ever, regardless of whether it is reachable or not.

You can replace gitk there with something like git log --graph --oneline --decorate if you prefer a nice graph on the console over a separate GUI app.

To spot stash commits, look for commit messages of this form:

        WIP on somebranch: commithash Some old commit message

Note: The commit message will only be in this form (starting with "WIP on") if you did not supply a message when you did git stash.

Just wanted to mention this addition to the accepted solution. It wasn't immediately obvious to me the first time I tried this method (maybe it should have been), but to apply the stash from the hash value, just use "git stash apply ":

$ git stash apply ad38abbf76e26c803b27a6079348192d32f52219

When I was new to git, this wasn't clear to me, and I was trying different combinations of "git show", "git apply", "patch", etc.

I just constructed a command that helped me find my lost stash commit:

for ref in `find .git/objects | sed -e 's#.git/objects/##' | grep / | tr -d /`; do if [ `git cat-file -t $ref` = "commit" ]; then git show --summary $ref; fi; done | less

This lists all the objects in the .git/objects tree, locates the ones that are of type commit, then shows a summary of each one. From this point it was just a matter of looking through the commits to find an appropriate "WIP on work: 6a9bb2" ("work" is my branch, 619bb2 is a recent commit).

I note that if I use "git stash apply" instead of "git stash pop" I wouldn't have this problem, and if I use "git stash save message" then the commit might have been easier to find.

Update: With Nathan's idea, this becomes shorter:

for ref in `git fsck --unreachable | grep commit | cut -d' ' -f3`; do git show --summary $ref; done | less

git fsck --unreachable | grep commit should show the sha1, although the list it returns might be quite large. git show <sha1> will show if it is the commit you want.

git cherry-pick -m 1 <sha1> will merge the commit onto the current branch.

My favorite is this one-liner:

git log --oneline  $( git fsck --no-reflogs | awk '/dangling commit/ {print $3}' )

This is basically the same idea as this answer but much shorter. Of course, you can still add --graph to get a tree-like display.

When you have found the commit in the list, apply with

git stash apply THE_COMMIT_HASH_FOUND

For me, using --no-reflogs did reveal the lost stash entry, but --unreachable (as found in many other answers) did not.

Run it on git bash when you are under Windows.

Credits: The details of the above commands are taken from https://gist.github.com/joseluisq/7f0f1402f05c45bac10814a9e38f81bf

You can achieve this in 2 easy steps

1. List lost stashes --> run this command for a project where all stashes were trashed:

   git fsck --unreachable | grep commit | cut -d ' ' -f3 | xargs git log --merges --no-walk

2. Send a lost stash back where it comes from --> Let’s use the commit hash of the second stash:

   git update-ref refs/stash 4b3fc45c94caadcc87d783064624585c194f4be8 -m "My recovered stash"

To see the commits in terminal, only filtering the ones we care about we can use:

git log --oneline --all --grep="^WIP on .*: [a-f0-9]\+" --grep="^On [^ ]*:" --grep="^index on [^ ]*:" $( env LANG=C git fsck --no-reflog | awk '/dangling commit/ {print $3}' )

This is based on Aristotle Pagaltzis answer.

What I came here looking for is how to actually get the stash back, regardless of what I have checked out. In particular, I had stashed something, then checked out an older version, then poped it, but the stash was a no-op at that earlier time point, so the stash disappeared; I couldn't just do git stash to push it back on the stack. This worked for me:

$ git checkout somethingOld
$ git stash pop
...
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
Dropped refs/stash@{0} (27f6bd8ba3c4a34f134e12fe69bf69c192f71179)
$ git checkout 27f6bd8ba3c
$ git reset HEAD^    # Make the working tree differ from the parent.
$ git stash # Put the stash back in the stack.
Saved working directory and index state WIP on (no branch): c2be516 Some message.
HEAD is now at c2be516 Some message.
$ git checkout somethingOld # Now we are back where we were.

In retrospect, I should have been using git stash apply not git stash pop. I was doing a bisect and had a little patch that I wanted to apply at every bisect step. Now I'm doing this:

$ git reset --hard; git bisect good; git stash apply
$ # Run tests
$ git reset --hard; git bisect bad; git stash apply
etc.

This worked for me (in 2022) with recovering my accidently deleted stash in git from a windows environment.

These steps outline how to recover any deleted git stashes or branches (assuming it has not been permanently delete by garbage collection).

1. Navigate to the directory where your project located.

2. Enter the command: git fsck --no-reflogs | find "dangling commit"

3. A list of hashes for dangling commits will appear. These will consist of branches and stashes that were deleted. Start with copy and pasting the hashes near the end of the list to find your stash or branch. For example, use the command: git log -1 [hash]

4. If the corresponding hash matches what you are trying to recover, use the following command to restore it" git stash apply [hash]

Knowing the approximate file name and it's location, and was able to find dropped stash files grepping dangling commits for path

for i in $(git fsck --no-reflogs | awk '/dangling commit/ {print $3}'); do
  if git log -5 --name-only -u $i | grep -q "<path-to-files>/.*<partial-file-name>.*"; then
    echo "found something in commit $i";
  fi;
done

You can follow the below process step by step:

1- use below to list all unreachable commits git fsck --unreachable

2- to show unreachable commit hash by git show hash

3- copy all log, you can see log like, unreachable blob, commit, tree.

4- apply git stash with log having commit hash git stash apply [replace hash]

To see only stash commits, where they attached, and what their contents are

result sample

Checking object directories: 100% (256/256), done.
2022-08-31 10:20:46 +0900 8d02f61 WIP on master: 243b594 add css
A       favicon.ico

command

git fsck --dangling | awk '/dangling commit/ {print $3}' | xargs -L 1 git --no-pager show -s --format="%ct %h" | sort | awk '{print $2}' | { while read hash; do status=$(git stash show $hash --name-status 2>/dev/null); if (( $? == 0 )); then git show $hash -s --format="%C(green)%ci %C(yellow)%h %C(blue)%B"; echo "$status"; fi; done; }

• To see full hash, change %h to %H
• To reduce time, tail fsck like git fsck --dangling | tail -100 | awk ...

recover sample