How to Batch Code Review Comments Before Submitting

To batch review comments on GitHub, click Start a review on your first line comment instead of posting it on its own. That comment and every later one (Add review comment) stay pending and visible only to you until you open Review changes, write a summary, pick Comment, Approve or Request changes, and click Submit review. GitLab works the same way with Start a review and Add to review. The author then sees the whole review at once instead of a trickle of separate comments, and you can edit or delete any comment before it goes out.

Batch comments with a pending review on GitHub

1. Open the pull request and select the Files changed tab.
2. Hover over a line and click the blue comment icon next to its line number. For several lines, click the first line number, then Shift-click the last one.
3. Type the comment and click Start a review.
4. For each later comment, click Add review comment. Comments stay marked as pending.
5. Tick Viewed on each file as you finish it. The file collapses, and the header shows how many files you've viewed. If the file changes later, the mark is removed.
6. When you're done, click Review changes, type a summary, choose Comment, Approve or Request changes, and click Submit review.

Until you submit, you can edit or delete pending comments. To throw the whole draft away, open the submit menu and choose to discard the review instead of submitting it.

A pending comment can also be a suggestion. Click the suggestion icon in the comment box, edit the code inside the suggestion block, and the author can apply it with one click once the review is submitted.

Batch comments on GitLab

1. Open the merge request and select Changes.
2. Write your first comment and select Start a review. It stays unpublished.
3. For later comments, select Add to review. Add comment now would publish that one comment immediately, so avoid it while batching.
4. Select Your review to see and edit everything pending.
5. Choose Approve, Comment or Request changes, optionally add a summary, and submit.

Why batching gives better reviews

Pending comments aren't only about fewer notifications. Reading the whole change before anything is sent lets you:

• Drop comments the rest of the diff answers. The "why is this here?" on file one often makes sense by file four.
• Merge repeated points. Five comments about the same pattern become one comment that names the pattern.
• Separate blocking from optional. Re-reading your pending list is the moment to decide what must change and what's a preference.
• Write the summary last. The summary in the submit box can say what matters most, so the author knows where to start.

Drafting a long review in a notes file

For a large change, or one you review across several sittings, some reviewers draft outside the browser first. A Markdown file per pull request works:

# PR 1234: refactor auth middleware

## src/auth/middleware.ts
- L45 issue (blocking): the catch block swallows the error. Log it or rethrow?
- L67 question: when does this TODO get removed?

## tests/auth/middleware.test.ts
- L12 suggestion: add a test for an expired token.

## Summary
Refactor looks sound. Main concern is error handling in validateToken.

Then copy each note into a pending comment on GitHub or GitLab, and paste the summary into the submit box. The notes file has two advantages over typing straight into comment boxes: you see every comment in one place, which makes duplicates and contradictions obvious, and a long comment can't be lost if a browser tab reloads.

The labels in that example follow Conventional Comments, a published convention that starts each comment with a label such as praise, nitpick, suggestion, issue or question, optionally followed by a decoration such as (blocking) or (non-blocking). It tells the author at a glance which comments must be addressed.

Moving drafted comments with the clipboard

When you paste a batch of drafted comments, Windows clipboard history saves a round of switching. Copy four or five notes from the file in a row, then switch to the browser and press Win+V to paste each one into its pending comment. How to copy more than one thing at a time on Windows explains the setup if Win+V history is off.

For comments you write again and again ("please add a test for this", "can this be a constant?"), GitHub's saved replies are better than the clipboard. They belong to your account, work in issues, pull requests and discussions across repositories, and you can keep up to 100. Insert one with the reply button (the curved-arrow icon) above the comment field. How to build a library of reusable replies covers the same idea outside GitHub.

Two cautions when copying into review comments:

• Strip secrets from anything you quote. A log line or stack trace pasted to explain a bug can carry a token or connection string, and once submitted it's visible to everyone with access to the repository. Do stack traces and tokens belong on the clipboard? covers redaction.
• Use code blocks for code. Wrap pasted code in triple backticks so indentation survives. How to paste code into Word, email and chat covers other destinations.

FAQ

Can the author see my pending review comments?

No. On GitHub, pending comments are visible only to you until you submit the review.

What happens if I close the tab before submitting?

Pending comments are saved with the pull request on GitHub and GitLab, so they're still there when you return. Text you've typed into a comment box but not yet added to the review is not.

How do I comment on a whole file instead of a line?

On GitHub's Files changed tab, click the comment icon at the right of the file's header.

Related reading

• How to Build a Library of Canned Responses on Windows
• How to Redact Tokens From Stack Traces Before Sharing
• How to Paste Code Into Word, Email and Chat
• How to Diff Two Copied Code Snippets

Sources

• Reviewing proposed changes in a pull request (GitHub Docs) — Start a review, Add review comment, pending comments, Viewed, and submitting a review.
• Merge request reviews (GitLab Docs) — Start a review, Add to review, Your review, and review outcomes.
• About saved replies (GitHub Docs) — reusable replies and the 100-reply limit.
• Using saved replies (GitHub Docs) — inserting a saved reply into a comment.
• Conventional Comments — comment labels and decorations.

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