Fake out your GitHub activity graph with this designer tool!

Customize your GitHub activity graph however you like using this drawing tool. It generates a set of commits that seeds the activity graph by changing GIT_AUTHOR_DATE and GIT_COMMITTER_DATE. Free to use at your own risk - for entertainment purposes only.

My activity graph used to be a barren smattering of yellow and green dots with wide swaths of grey. To date in my career my work has been done under NDA, which means I don't have an opportunity to share my code publicly. Thanks to this tool we can all have a github activity graph that looks awesome!

1) Draw Your Design:

  • Pick the color you want to use. Colors are based on commit frequency which this tool takes care of.
  • Click / drag to fill each day with the selected color.
  • Your design is automatically saved in your browser's local storage as you work on it.
Select Color:


2) Build The Commits:

  • The GitHub graph shows the past year of activity, but as of June 2019 it looks like GitHub is no longer counting commits that happen in the past! So you can't do retroactive commits, only forward looking activity.
  • "Max Daily Commits" represents the number of commits in the darkest colored squares. Increase it to ensure any other public commits have less of an impact on the pattern.
  • Only one year of commits is visible on GitHub at a time. This tool lets you draw 2 years worth of commits. If you want it to go longer, just do it again with the start date +2 years.
  • The commits start on the previous Sunday from the date selected.
Max Daily Commits: Start Week: (yyyy-mm-dd)

Platform:
(needed to generate commits with varying content)



3) Push It!

  • Create a new public repo on github.
  • Create a new local directory and link to the github repo. 
    $ mkdir myproject && cd myproject
$ git init
$ git remote add origin git@github.com:{YOUR USER}/{YOUR REPO NAME}.git
  • Copy & paste the generated script into a file in that directory and run it.
    • *nix / cygwin: chmod +x myfile.sh && myfile.sh
    • Windows: works best in a cygwin or mingw64 git bash shell, save as myfile.sh, then run the file `source myfile.sh`
  • Push changes! 
    $ git push -u origin master
  • Hate it? Just delete the repo from your account and wait for the graph to update.
  • I've noticed when I try graphs with lots of points github sometimes cuts it off. I've had success breaking up the script into separate pushes, but I don't know what is going on exactly. Your mileage may vary.




Version History:
  • 1.0 Released 4/26/2015

  • 1.1 Released 7/3/2016
    Github stopped counting empty commits on the activity graph?!
    v1.1 fixes that by adding a random file change as part of each commit.
    The new 'platform' option will update 'file.txt' with a random string each commit. On Windows, it is the date to nano-second resolution (open to one liners that actually work).
    • MacOS: 
      cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
    • Linux: 
      cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
    • Windows: 
      date --rfc-3339='ns'

    Please let me know via the contact link below if you run into trouble with this approach.

  • 1.1.1 Released 6/25/2019
    GitHub stopped rendering activity for commits in the past! They must not be very happy with tools like this. Start date adjusted to today instead of 1 year ago.

Inspired by:
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