How to Undo a Pushed Commit in Git: Simple and IDE‑Friendly Methods

When an interview question asks how to revert code that has already been pushed to a remote Git repository, there are two practical approaches.

Simple brute‑force method

If the erroneous changes are few, you can compare the current commit with the target commit, manually delete the unwanted code, and commit the cleaned version. In IntelliJ IDEA you can select the two commits, click Compare Versions, and remove the differences.

Elegant method using Git in IDEA

Reset the current branch to the desired commit. IDEA presents four reset options:

Soft:  your previous changes stay staged.
Mixed: your previous changes stay unstaged.
Hard:  the working tree is reset to the selected commit; all changes are lost.
Keep:  the working tree is reset but local changes are kept.

Choose hard to discard the wrong commits locally. Then open the Push dialog, enable Force Push, and push the reset branch to the remote repository. This removes the unwanted commits from the remote as well (unless the branch is protected).

Note: the steps shown are for IDEA 2023; for other versions you may need to use Git commands directly.