# [Feature Proposal] Add a built-in 'git whoami' command

3 messages from 2026-03-31 to 2026-03-31. Participants: Giorgos Gasparis, Junio C Hamano, Kristoffer Haugsbakk.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/65396

## Giorgos Gasparis, 2026-03-31 14:57

Subject: [Feature Proposal] Add a built-in 'git whoami' command
Message-ID: <CALCP2CjymE-i9TsKB8TmW_0M=ZDbtLPzZFpx4-ba01164b1MOA@mail.gmail.com>

```
Hello Git team,

I would like to propose adding a native git whoami command to Git to
easily check the currently active identity.

Currently, users have to run two separate commands (git config
user.name and git config user.email) to check this. This is a frequent
friction point for developers balancing work and personal repositories
who want to double-check their active profile before committing.

To solve this locally, I currently use the following alias in my .gitconfig:

[alias] whoami = !echo "👤 $(git config user.name) | 📧 $(git config
user.email)"

Having a built-in command that provides this kind of unified,
single-line output natively (even as standard plain text without
emojis) would be a great quality-of-life improvement for the wider
community so they don't have to build custom aliases.

Thank you for your time and for maintaining Git, Georgios Gasparis

```

## Junio C Hamano, 2026-03-31 16:26

Subject: Re: [Feature Proposal] Add a built-in 'git whoami' command
Message-ID: <xmqqzf3o0xuj.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CALCP2CjymE-i9TsKB8TmW_0M=ZDbtLPzZFpx4-ba01164b1MOA@mail.gmail.com>

```
Giorgos Gasparis <gasp.giorgos@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello Git team,
>
> I would like to propose adding a native git whoami command to Git to
> easily check the currently active identity.
>
> Currently, users have to run two separate commands (git config
> user.name and git config user.email) to check this.

"git var GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT"?


```

## Kristoffer Haugsbakk, 2026-03-31 16:43

Subject: Re: [Feature Proposal] Add a built-in 'git whoami' command
Message-ID: <fab20df3-248b-4590-9b3e-e7601404df55@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALCP2CjymE-i9TsKB8TmW_0M=ZDbtLPzZFpx4-ba01164b1MOA@mail.gmail.com>

```
On Tue, Mar 31, 2026, at 16:57, Giorgos Gasparis wrote:
> I would like to propose adding a native git whoami command to Git to
> easily check the currently active identity.
>
> Currently, users have to run two separate commands (git config
> user.name and git config user.email) to check this. This is a frequent
> friction point for developers balancing work and personal repositories
> who want to double-check their active profile before committing.
>
> To solve this locally, I currently use the following alias in my .gitconfig:
>
> [alias] whoami = !echo "👤 $(git config user.name) | 📧 $(git config
> user.email)"

Strange. I was looking at an example from git-interpret-trailers(1) today.

    $ git config trailer.sign.cmd 'echo "$(git config user.name) <$(git config user.email)>"'

And “git-whoami(1)?” jumped in to my mind.

You can kind of get that with [which Junio mentioned after I wrote this draft]

    git var GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT | sed -e 's/> .*/>/'

Too bad with the postprocessing needed for the timestamp.

> Having a built-in command that provides this kind of unified,
> single-line output natively (even as standard plain text without
> emojis) would be a great quality-of-life improvement for the wider
> community so they don't have to build custom aliases.

A problem (subjectively) is that there are already 147 git(1) commands.

```