Dismissing reviews on Pull Requests
Pull request reviews are a great way to share the weight of building software. Using protected branches to block merging when pull requests have reviews that request changes helps your…
Pull request reviews are a great way to share the weight of building software. Using protected branches to block merging when pull requests have reviews that request changes helps your team maintain quality, bug-free code. However, this requirement can sometimes block your team’s progress without good reason. If someone leaves a review that requests changes and then goes on vacation or runs into computer problems, your pull request could be blocked for days, even after you’ve addressed the reviewer’s concerns.
To improve this workflow, we’re adding the ability for pull request collaborators to dismiss reviews. When someone leaves a review that requests changes, dismissing the review changes it from a review that requests changes to a review comment. This will unblock your pull request, freeing you up to merge it!
You can also dismiss an approving review. This is useful when your pull request has changed significantly since the approval, and you think it’s important to get another review.
When one of your team members dismisses a review, they’ll have to leave a reason why. This keeps people from simply bypassing the protected branch review requirement out of convenience.
Written by
Related posts
Developers still need the right to challenge junk patents
Calling on developers, startups, and open source organizations to advocate against patent rules that would make it harder to challenge bad patents by the December 2 deadline.
GitHub Availability Report: October 2025
In October, we experienced four incidents that resulted in degraded performance across GitHub services.
TypeScript, Python, and the AI feedback loop changing software development
An interview with the leader of GitHub Next, Idan Gazit, on TypeScript, Python, and what comes next.