This feature update was also posted on the Bitbucket blog.
Hello, Bitbucket Cloud Community! đ
We are incredibly excited to announce the introduction of Iterative review, a feature designed to help your team get pull requests completed faster by removing the need to re-review code youâve already seen. Now when an author pushes new commits based on your pull request (PR) feedback, youâll have the option to focus on just those new changes.
How it works
Any time you finish reviewing a pull request, Bitbucket will make a note of the last commit you viewed. For purposes of this feature, here are the different actions that constitute âreviewingâ:
- Approving the PR
- Requesting changes
- Marking all files as viewed
- Submitting batched comments (with or without approval status)
When the author makes new commits to the PR, youâll then have the option to view just the changes made since your last review. This is possible thanks to a new dropdown on the âFiles changedâ tab that controls your diff view for the pull request.

By default this dropdown will be set to âAll changesâ, meaning youâll be looking at the full changeset on the source branch. This is the view that weâve always shown on pull requests. When you switch the dropdown to âChanges since last reviewâ, weâll show you just the files changed in the commit(s) since you last reviewed the PR. The number next to âFiles changedâ will update to reflect the number of files youâre viewing.
The âChanges since last reviewâ option will only appear when a PR has new commits that you havenât seen. Remember that your last-reviewed commit is specific to you as a user, so your teammates may see a different view of the PR, depending on how much of it theyâve already reviewed.
At any time during a pull request, you can also select an arbitrary commit (or range of commits) in the dropdown, allowing you to focus on any part of the PRâs history.
Things to consider
We will always default you to âAll changesâ mode â the incumbent functionality on pull requests up to now â but we think youâll find iterative review to be useful in many situations. The ability to look at just a slice of a pull request is a powerful feature, and it may take some getting used to. Here are some important considerations when using iterative review:
- When you are looking at a PR in âChanges since last reviewâ mode (or with a custom diff range selected), any comments you make will be associated with that diff range. Other PR viewers will be able to access these comments from the activity feed or by using the comment navigation dropdown.
- We donât currently support showing âChanges since last reviewâ if a PR has had a merge commit or destructive force push since your last review.
Learn more about pull request review
Available today on your Bitbucket workspace
Iterative review is available today for all teams using Bitbucket Cloud. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts with us through the help '?' menu > Give feedback.