You may find you've just created a new commit, but you want to modify the message. 

Simply navigate to your project's directory via the command prompt, and use the [`git commit`](/git/committing-file-changes) amend flag:

```bash
$ git commit --amend
```

You'll be redirected to your text editor to edit the message. The message will be at the very top of the screen; simply edit it:

```
New commit message

# Please enter the commit message for your changes. Lines starting
# with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.
#
# Date:      Thu May 16 11:47:16 2019 +0100
#
# On branch my_new_branch
# Your branch is up to date with 'origin/my_new_branch'.
#
# Changes to be committed:
#       new file:   newfile
#
```

Then, press `ctrl + x` followed by `y` and the enter key.

```
[my_new_branch b356ae0] New commit message
 Date: Thu May 16 11:47:16 2019 +0100
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 newfile
 ```

Note that `--amend` rewrites history. If you've already pushed the commit, you'll need to force-push with [`git push --force-with-lease`](/git/publishing-local-changes) to update the remote.

You can use [`git log`](/git/viewing-previous-commits) to verify the message was updated correctly. If you need to update the author across multiple commits instead, see [how to update the author of multiple commits](/git/faqs/update-author-committer-multiple-git-commits).

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