Why Does Git Show Files as Modified When I Haven’t Changed Them? #26207

I'd check line endings first, especially if the repository is being used across Windows and Unix-based systems.

Start by checking your Git configuration:

git config --show-origin --get core.autocrlf

Then check whether Git sees an actual content difference:

git diff --ignore-space-at-eol

If the diff disappears when ignoring end-of-line whitespace, line-ending conversion is probably the cause.

For a repository shared across different operating systems, .gitattributes is usually a better solution than relying on every developer to configure core.autocrlf correctly. For example:

* text=auto

You can also explicitly define important file types:

*.sh text eol=lf
*.py text eol=lf
*.bat text eol=crlf

I'd also check whether Git is detecting executable-bit changes:

git diff --summary

If you see a mode change such as 100644 => 100755, the problem is related to file permissions rather than the file contents. You can check:

git config --get core.filemode

So I wouldn't immediately run git reset --hard or discard the changes. First determine whether Git is detecting line-ending changes, whitespace changes, or file-mode changes. Once the cause is identified, fixing the repository configuration (usually with .gitattributes) is much safer than repeatedly resetting the files.