Reviewing pull requests is one of the main ways people collaborate on {% data variables.product.github %}. When you review a peer's work, you help catch issues early, share knowledge, and decide whether a change is ready to merge.
Anyone with read access can review and comment on proposed changes. As a reviewer, you can:
- Leave general feedback on the overall pull request.
- Comment on specific lines to ask questions or explain concerns.
- Suggest exact changes that the author can apply with a single click.
Review conversations appear in the pull request timeline so the whole team can follow the discussion and track decisions.
When you finish a review, you submit it with a decision that tells the author what to do next:
- Comment leaves general feedback without explicitly approving or requesting changes.
- Approve signals that the changes are ready to merge.
- Request changes flags feedback that the author should address before the pull request merges.
Thorough reviews go beyond reading the diff top to bottom. {% data variables.product.github %} gives you tools to review large or complex changes with precision:
- Review one file at a time, mark each file as Viewed to collapse it, and use the progress bar to track how much of the pull request you've covered.
- Assess security and dependencies. Dependency review shows how a pull request changes dependencies and whether it introduces known vulnerabilities, and code scanning surfaces alerts on the proposed changes. {% ifversion fpt or ghec %}
- Automate reviews with {% data variables.product.prodname_copilot_short %}. {% data variables.product.prodname_copilot_short %} can perform automated code reviews on a pull request, comment on specific lines, and suggest changes, helping you catch common issues before a human reviewer looks at the code. {% endif %}