Problem

I've changed some files in my directory and git status shows the tell-tale Changes not staged for commit: message which implies that git knows there are changed files in my directory. However, I can't see any of the file names that are listed below it. How can I fix this?

Solution

Because git seems to know that there are files that require staging, it's unlikely that anything is actually wrong with git. Instead, it's more likely that somehow the color configuration of your git outputs match the background of your terminal and thus that git is outputting the file list just that you can't see them.

You can change these configurations via your .gitconfig file located at ~/.gitconfig on Linux and Windows Subsystem for Linux.

To manually change these, open the file in your favorite editor and add something like:

[color "status"]
  added = green
  changed = red bold
  untracked = magenta bold

source

Note: If you're using WSL, make sure you open your ~/.gitconfig with a WSL-native app like vim or nano to avoid Windows creating a shadow-copy of your dotfile when opening with a Windows app

Change the color of the output message you can't see and that should do the trick!