GitHub has officially rolled out the improved “Files Changed” experience as the default for all users. After months in public preview, this redesigned pull request review interface brings significant improvements to performance, accessibility, and overall productivity when reviewing code changes.

Key Improvements Over the Classic Experience

The new interface maintains familiarity for existing users while adding several notable enhancements:

Comment on Any Line

Previously, you could only comment on lines directly surrounding a change. Now you can add review comments to any line in a changed file, making it easier to provide context or point out related code that might need attention.

View PR Description Without Switching Pages

A new Overview panel lets you view the pull request description directly from the “Files changed” page. No more jumping back and forth between tabs to remember what the PR is supposed to accomplish.

Enhanced File Tree

The file tree sidebar is now resizable and includes visual indicators showing which files have comments, errors, or warnings. This makes it much easier to track your progress when reviewing large PRs with many changed files.

Draft Comments That Persist

Comments and replies are now saved locally in your browser. If you accidentally close the tab or refresh the page, your in-progress feedback won’t be lost.

Fewer Page Reloads

Actions like refreshing to pull in new changes, switching between split and unified diff modes, and other common tasks no longer force a full page reload. The interface feels much snappier as a result.

Improved Accessibility

The new experience includes better keyboard navigation, screen reader landmarks, and increased line spacing options to make code review accessible to everyone.

Experimental Mode for Large Pull Requests

One of the most interesting additions is an experimental mode specifically designed for reviewing large pull requests. This mode uses virtualization to reduce the number of DOM elements the browser needs to manage, significantly improving memory usage and page responsiveness—especially on slower machines.

When viewing a large PR, you’ll see a banner offering to try this experimental mode. There are some trade-offs: browser find functionality, text selection across the entire page, printing, and some browser extensions may not work as expected since the full diff isn’t rendered in the DOM. You can switch back to single file mode at any time.

Bug Fixes and Polish

GitHub has also addressed numerous issues including problems with suggested changes being applied incorrectly, comment workflow bugs, interaction lag (especially on Safari), and various UI quirks like scroll positioning and sticky headers behaving unexpectedly.

Opting Out

If you prefer the classic experience, you can still opt out through your settings. However, given the improvements in this new version, it’s worth giving it a fair trial before switching back.

Providing Feedback

GitHub is actively collecting feedback on the new experience. If you encounter issues or have suggestions, you can participate in the “Files Changed” preview feedback discussion on GitHub.