GIT-CHECKOUT(1) Git Manual GIT-CHECKOUT(1) NAME git-checkout - Switch branches or restore working tree files SYNOPSIS git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [<branch>] git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] --detach [<branch>] git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [--detach] <commit> git checkout [-q] [-f] [-m] [[-b|-B|--orphan] <new-branch>] [<start-point>] git checkout <tree-ish> [--] <pathspec>... git checkout <tree-ish> --pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul] git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [--] <pathspec>... git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] --pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul] git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>...] DESCRIPTION git checkout has two main modes: 1. Switch branches, with git checkout <branch> 2. Restore a different version of a file, for example with git checkout <commit> <filename> or git checkout <filename> See ARGUMENT DISAMBIGUATION below for how Git decides which one to do. git checkout [<branch>] Switch to <branch>. This sets the current branch to <branch> and up- dates the files in your working directory. The checkout will fail if there are uncommitted changes to any files where <branch> and your cur- rent commit have different content. Uncommitted changes will otherwise be kept. If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in ex- actly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name and --no-guess is not specified, treat as equivalent to $ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch> Running git checkout without specifying a branch has no effect except to print out the tracking information for the current branch. git checkout -b <new-branch> [<start-point>] Create a new branch named <new-branch>, start it at <start-point> (de- faults to the current commit), and check out the new branch. You can use the --track or --no-track options to set the branch's upstream tracking information. This will fail if there's an error checking out <new-branch>, for exam- ple if checking out the <start-point> commit would overwrite your un- committed changes. git checkout -B <branch> [<start-point>] The same as -b, except that if the branch already exists it resets <branch> to the start point instead of failing. git checkout --detach [<branch>], git checkout [--detach] <commit> The same as git checkout <branch>, except that instead of pointing HEAD at the branch, it points HEAD at the commit ID. See the "DETACHED HEAD" section below for more. Omitting <branch> detaches HEAD at the tip of the current branch. git checkout <tree-ish> [--] <pathspec>..., git checkout <tree-ish> --path- spec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul] Replace the specified files and/or directories with the version from the given commit or tree and add them to the index (also known as "staging area"). For example, git checkout main file.txt will replace file.txt with the version from main. git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [--] <pathspec>..., git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] --path- spec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul] Replace the specified files and/or directories with the version from the index. For example, if you check out a commit, edit file.txt, and then decide those changes were a mistake, git checkout file.txt will discard any unstaged changes to file.txt. This will fail if the file has a merge conflict and you haven't yet run git add file.txt (or something equivalent) to mark it as resolved. You can use -f to ignore the unmerged files instead of failing, use --ours or --theirs to replace them with the version from a specific side of the merge, or use -m to replace them with the original conflicted merge result. git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>...] This is similar to the previous two modes, but lets you use the inter- active interface to show the "diff" output and choose which hunks to use in the result. See below for the description of --patch option. OPTIONS -q, --quiet Quiet, suppress feedback messages. --progress, --no-progress Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless --quiet is specified. This flag enables progress reporting even if not attached to a terminal, re- gardless of --quiet. -f, --force When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD, and even if there are untracked files in the way. This is used to throw away local changes and any untracked files or di- rectories that are in the way. When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon unmerged en- tries; instead, unmerged entries are ignored. --ours, --theirs When checking out paths from the index, check out stage #2 (ours) or #3 (theirs) for unmerged paths. Note that during git rebase and git pull --rebase, ours and theirs may appear swapped; --ours gives the version from the branch the changes are rebased onto, while --theirs gives the version from the branch that holds your work that is being rebased. This is because rebase is used in a workflow that treats the history at the remote as the shared canonical one, and treats the work done on the branch you are rebasing as the third-party work to be integrated, and you are temporarily assuming the role of the keeper of the canonical history during the rebase. As the keeper of the canonical history, you need to view the history from the remote as ours (i.e. "our shared canonical history"), while what you did on your side branch as theirs (i.e. "one contributor's work on top of it"). -b <new-branch> Create a new branch named <new-branch>, start it at <start-point>, and check the resulting branch out; see git-branch(1) for details. -B <new-branch> The same as -b, except that if the branch already exists it resets <branch> to the start point instead of failing. -t, --track[=(direct|inherit)] When creating a new branch, set up "upstream" configuration. See --track in git-branch(1) for details. As a convenience, --track without -b implies branch creation. If no -b option is given, the name of the new branch will be derived from the remote-tracking branch, by looking at the local part of the refspec configured for the corresponding remote, and then stripping the initial part up to the "*". This would tell us to use hack as the local branch when branching off of origin/hack (or remotes/origin/hack, or even refs/remotes/origin/hack). If the given name has no slash, or the above guessing results in an empty name, the guessing is aborted. You can explicitly give a name with -b in such a case. --no-track Do not set up "upstream" configuration, even if the branch.autoSetup- Merge configuration variable is true. --guess, --no-guess If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in ex- actly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name, treat as equivalent to $ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch> If the branch exists in multiple remotes and one of them is named by the checkout.defaultRemote configuration variable, we'll use that one for the purposes of disambiguation, even if the <branch> isn't unique across all remotes. Set it to e.g. checkout.defaultRemote=origin to always checkout remote branches from there if <branch> is ambiguous but exists on the origin remote. See also checkout.defaultRemote in git- config(1). --guess is the default behavior. Use --no-guess to disable it. The default behavior can be set via the checkout.guess configuration variable. -l Create the new branch's reflog; see git-branch(1) for details. -d, --detach Rather than checking out a branch to work on it, check out a commit for inspection and discardable experiments. This is the default behavior of git checkout <commit> when <commit> is not a branch name. See the "DE- TACHED HEAD" section below for details. --orphan <new-branch> Create a new unborn branch, named <new-branch>, started from <start-point> and switch to it. The first commit made on this new branch will have no parents and it will be the root of a new history totally disconnected from all the other branches and commits. The index and the working tree are adjusted as if you had previously run git checkout <start-point>. This allows you to start a new history that records a set of paths similar to <start-point> by easily running git commit -a to make the root commit. This can be useful when you want to publish the tree from a commit without exposing its full history. You might want to do this to publish an open source branch of a project whose current tree is "clean", but whose full history contains proprietary or otherwise encumbered bits of code. If you want to start a disconnected history that records a set of paths that is totally different from the one of <start-point>, then you should clear the index and the working tree right after creating the orphan branch by running git rm -rf . from the top level of the working tree. Afterwards you will be ready to prepare your new files, repopu- lating the working tree, by copying them from elsewhere, extracting a tarball, etc. --ignore-skip-worktree-bits In sparse checkout mode, git checkout -- <path>... would update only entries matched by <paths> and sparse patterns in $GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout. This option ignores the sparse patterns and adds back any files in <path>.... -m, --merge When switching branches, if you have local modifications to one or more files that are different between the current branch and the branch to which you are switching, the command refuses to switch branches in or- der to preserve your modifications in context. However, with this op- tion, a three-way merge between the current branch, your working tree contents, and the new branch is done, and you will be on the new branch. When a merge conflict happens, the index entries for conflicting paths are left unmerged, and you need to resolve the conflicts and mark the resolved paths with git add (or git rm if the merge should result in deletion of the path). When checking out paths from the index, this option lets you recreate the conflicted merge in the specified paths. This option cannot be used when checking out paths from a tree-ish. When switching branches with --merge, staged changes may be lost. --conflict=<style> The same as --merge option above, but changes the way the conflicting hunks are presented, overriding the merge.conflictStyle configuration variable. Possible values are merge (default), diff3, and zdiff3. -p, --patch Interactively select hunks in the difference between the <tree-ish> (or the index, if unspecified) and the working tree. The chosen hunks are then applied in reverse to the working tree (and if a <tree-ish> was specified, the index). This means that you can use git checkout -p to selectively discard ed- its from your current working tree. See the "Interactive Mode" section of git-add(1) to learn how to operate the --patch mode. Note that this option uses the no overlay mode by default (see also --overlay), and currently doesn't support overlay mode. -U<n>, --unified=<n> Generate diffs with <n> lines of context. Defaults to diff.context or 3 if the config option is unset. --inter-hunk-context=<n> Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified <number> of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other. Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config option is unset. --ignore-other-worktrees git checkout refuses when the wanted branch is already checked out or otherwise in use by another worktree. This option makes it check the branch out anyway. In other words, the branch can be in use by more than one worktree. --overwrite-ignore, --no-overwrite-ignore Silently overwrite ignored files when switching branches. This is the default behavior. Use --no-overwrite-ignore to abort the operation when the new branch contains ignored files. --recurse-submodules, --no-recurse-submodules Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all active sub- modules according to the commit recorded in the superproject. If local modifications in a submodule would be overwritten the checkout will fail unless -f is used. If nothing (or --no-recurse-submodules) is used, submodules working trees will not be updated. Just like git-sub- module(1), this will detach HEAD of the submodule. --overlay, --no-overlay In the default overlay mode, git checkout never removes files from the index or the working tree. When specifying --no-overlay, files that ap- pear in the index and working tree, but not in <tree-ish> are removed, to make them match <tree-ish> exactly. --pathspec-from-file=<file> Pathspec is passed in <file> instead of commandline args. If <file> is exactly - then standard input is used. Pathspec elements are separated by LF or CR/LF. Pathspec elements can be quoted as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)). See also --pathspec-file-nul and global --literal-pathspecs. --pathspec-file-nul Only meaningful with --pathspec-from-file. Pathspec elements are sepa- rated with NUL character and all other characters are taken literally (including newlines and quotes). <branch> Branch to checkout; if it refers to a branch (i.e., a name that, when prepended with "refs/heads/", is a valid ref), then that branch is checked out. Otherwise, if it refers to a valid commit, your HEAD be- comes "detached" and you are no longer on any branch (see below for de- tails). You can use the @{-N} syntax to refer to the N-th last branch/commit checked out using "git checkout" operation. You may also specify - which is synonymous to @{-1}. As a special case, you may use <rev-a>...<rev-b> as a shortcut for the merge base of <rev-a> and <rev-b> if there is exactly one merge base. You can leave out at most one of <rev-a> and <rev-b>, in which case it defaults to HEAD. <new-branch> Name for the new branch. <start-point> The name of a commit at which to start the new branch; see git- branch(1) for details. Defaults to HEAD. As a special case, you may use <rev-a>...<rev-b> as a shortcut for the merge base of <rev-a> and <rev-b> if there is exactly one merge base. You can leave out at most one of <rev-a> and <rev-b>, in which case it defaults to HEAD. <tree-ish> Tree to checkout from (when paths are given). If not specified, the in- dex will be used. As a special case, you may use <rev-a>...<rev-b> as a shortcut for the merge base of <rev-a> and <rev-b> if there is exactly one merge base. You can leave out at most one of <rev-a> and <rev-b>, in which case it defaults to HEAD. -- Do not interpret any more arguments as options. <pathspec>... Limits the paths affected by the operation. For more details, see the pathspec entry in gitglossary(7). DETACHED HEAD HEAD normally refers to a named branch (e.g. master). Meanwhile, each branch refers to a specific commit. Let's look at a repo with three com- mits, one of them tagged, and with branch master checked out: HEAD (refers to branch 'master') | v a---b---c branch 'master' (refers to commit 'c') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b') When a commit is created in this state, the branch is updated to refer to the new commit. Specifically, git commit creates a new commit d, whose par- ent is commit c, and then updates branch master to refer to new commit d. HEAD still refers to branch master and so indirectly now refers to commit d: $ edit; git add; git commit HEAD (refers to branch 'master') | v a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b') It is sometimes useful to be able to checkout a commit that is not at the tip of any named branch, or even to create a new commit that is not refer- enced by a named branch. Let's look at what happens when we checkout commit b (here we show two ways this may be done): $ git checkout v2.0 # or $ git checkout master^^ HEAD (refers to commit 'b') | v a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b') Notice that regardless of which checkout command we use, HEAD now refers directly to commit b. This is known as being in detached HEAD state. It means simply that HEAD refers to a specific commit, as opposed to referring to a named branch. Let's see what happens when we create a commit: $ edit; git add; git commit HEAD (refers to commit 'e') | v e / a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b') There is now a new commit e, but it is referenced only by HEAD. We can of course add yet another commit in this state: $ edit; git add; git commit HEAD (refers to commit 'f') | v e---f / a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b') In fact, we can perform all the normal Git operations. But, let's look at what happens when we then checkout master: $ git checkout master HEAD (refers to branch 'master') e---f | / v a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd') ^ | tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b') It is important to realize that at this point nothing refers to commit f. Eventually commit f (and by extension commit e) will be deleted by the rou- tine Git garbage collection process, unless we create a reference before that happens. If we have not yet moved away from commit f, any of these will create a reference to it: $ git checkout -b foo # or "git switch -c foo" (1) $ git branch foo (2) $ git tag foo (3) 1. creates a new branch foo, which refers to commit f, and then updates HEAD to refer to branch foo. In other words, we'll no longer be in detached HEAD state after this command. 2. similarly creates a new branch foo, which refers to commit f, but leaves HEAD detached. 3. creates a new tag foo, which refers to commit f, leaving HEAD detached. If we have moved away from commit f, then we must first recover its object name (typically by using git reflog), and then we can create a reference to it. For example, to see the last two commits to which HEAD referred, we can use either of these commands: $ git reflog -2 HEAD # or $ git log -g -2 HEAD ARGUMENT DISAMBIGUATION When you run git checkout <something>, Git tries to guess whether <some- thing> is intended to be a branch, a commit, or a set of file(s), and then either switches to that branch or commit, or restores the specified files. If there's any ambiguity, Git will treat <something> as a branch or commit, but you can use the double dash -- to force Git to treat the parameter as a list of files and/or directories, like this: git checkout -- file.txt EXAMPLES 1. Paths The following sequence checks out the master branch, reverts the Makefile to two revisions back, deletes hello.c by mistake, and gets it back from the index. $ git checkout master (1) $ git checkout master~2 Makefile (2) $ rm -f hello.c $ git checkout hello.c (3) 1. switch branch 2. take a file out of another commit 3. restore hello.c from the index If you want to check out all C source files out of the index, you can say $ git checkout -- '*.c' Note the quotes around *.c. The file hello.c will also be checked out, even though it is no longer in the working tree, because the file globbing is used to match entries in the index (not in the working tree by the shell). If you have an unfortunate branch that is named hello.c, this step would be confused as an instruction to switch to that branch. You should instead write: $ git checkout -- hello.c 2. Merge After working in the wrong branch, switching to the correct branch would be done using: $ git checkout mytopic However, your "wrong" branch and correct mytopic branch may differ in files that you have modified locally, in which case the above checkout would fail like this: $ git checkout mytopic error: You have local changes to 'frotz'; not switching branches. You can give the -m flag to the command, which would try a three-way merge: $ git checkout -m mytopic Auto-merging frotz After this three-way merge, the local modifications are not registered in your index file, so git diff would show you what changes you made since the tip of the new branch. 3. Merge conflict When a merge conflict happens during switching branches with the -m option, you would see something like this: $ git checkout -m mytopic Auto-merging frotz ERROR: Merge conflict in frotz fatal: merge program failed At this point, git diff shows the changes cleanly merged as in the previous example, as well as the changes in the conflicted files. Edit and resolve the conflict and mark it resolved with git add as usual: $ edit frotz $ git add frotz CONFIGURATION Everything below this line in this section is selectively included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as what's found there: checkout.defaultRemote When you run git checkout <something> or git switch <something> and only have one remote, it may implicitly fall back on checking out and tracking e.g. origin/<something>. This stops working as soon as you have more than one remote with a <something> reference. This setting allows for setting the name of a preferred remote that should always win when it comes to disambiguation. The typical use-case is to set this to origin. Currently this is used by git-switch(1) and git-checkout(1) when git checkout <something> or git switch <something> will checkout the <some- thing> branch on another remote, and by git-worktree(1) when git work- tree add refers to a remote branch. This setting might be used for other checkout-like commands or functionality in the future. checkout.guess Provides the default value for the --guess or --no-guess option in git checkout and git switch. See git-switch(1) and git-checkout(1). checkout.workers The number of parallel workers to use when updating the working tree. The default is one, i.e. sequential execution. If set to a value less than one, Git will use as many workers as the number of logical cores available. This setting and checkout.thresholdForParallelism affect all commands that perform checkout. E.g. checkout, clone, reset, sparse-checkout, etc. Note Parallel checkout usually delivers better performance for reposito- ries located on SSDs or over NFS. For repositories on spinning disks and/or machines with a small number of cores, the default se- quential checkout often performs better. The size and compression level of a repository might also influence how well the parallel version performs. checkout.thresholdForParallelism When running parallel checkout with a small number of files, the cost of subprocess spawning and inter-process communication might outweigh the parallelization gains. This setting allows you to define the mini- mum number of files for which parallel checkout should be attempted. The default is 100. SEE ALSO git-switch(1), git-restore(1) GIT Part of the git(1) suite Git 2.53.0 2026-02-01 GIT-CHECKOUT(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | DETACHED HEAD | ARGUMENT DISAMBIGUATION | EXAMPLES | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT
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