The Status area is where you can inspect your repository's working directory.
It is vertically divided into two main sections: a list of files (upper part) and a details area (lower part) that shows the contents of the file that was selected in the list above.
IMPORTANT:It's essential to understand how the Sidebar and the Status area relate to each other. The list of files shown in the Status area are the files from your current working branch (HEAD). These are the files that are currently checked out on your disk.
The shown files are those currently checked out in your working directory. These files could e.g. be modified or newly added to your repository - facts that Tower informs you about in the list. You can perform a lot of actions on these files, e.g. stage, rename, delete, ignore, and many more.
You can switch between two alternate display modes: "Modified" or "All". The "Modified" mode shows you only files which are modified, deleted, or new and leaves all unchanged files disregarded. This is perfect when you are actively working with files and want to get an overview of what happened before you commit your changes.
"All" shows you all current files (not only modified ones) in a tree structure.
Two columns in the table are of special importance: "Staged" and "Status".
The "Staged" column indicates if the file has staged changes - changes that will be included in the next commit. The "Status" column indicates how the file was changed (modified, added, deleted, renamed, etc.) and if these changes are staged or not (an icon on the left side means that staged changes are present; an icon on the right means that unstaged changes are present). Note that a file can contain both staged and unstaged changes.
The details area shows the contents / modifications for the selected file from the list above.
There are four different types of views for a file from your current working directory:
unstaged: shows the unstaged changes that a file currently has in a diff format.
staged: shows the staged changes that a file currently has in a diff format.
base: shows the file as it is/was in the last commit.
current: shows the file as it currently is on your disk.
If the file is currently in a conflict state (during a merge conflict) a view "mine/theirs" view, showing the differences between the local and the remote version, is also available.