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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | DETACHED HEAD | ARGUMENT DISAMBIGUATION | EXAMPLES | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-CHECKOUT(1) Git Manual GIT-CHECKOUT(1)
git-checkout - Switch branches or restore working tree files
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 [-f] <tree-ish> [--] <pathspec>...
git checkout [-f] <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>...]
Updates files in the working tree to match the version in the
index or the specified tree. If no pathspec was given, git
checkout will also update HEAD to set the specified branch as the
current branch.
git checkout [<branch>]
To prepare for working on <branch>, switch to it by updating
the index and the files in the working tree, and by pointing
HEAD at the branch. Local modifications to the files in the
working tree are kept, so that they can be committed to the
<branch>.
If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking
branch in exactly 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>
You could omit <branch>, in which case the command degenerates
to "check out the current branch", which is a glorified no-op
with rather expensive side-effects to show only the tracking
information, if it exists, for the current branch.
git checkout (-b|-B) <new-branch> [<start-point>]
Specifying -b causes a new branch to be created as if
git-branch(1) were called and then checked out. In this case
you can use the --track or --no-track options, which will be
passed to git branch. As a convenience, --track without -b
implies branch creation; see the description of --track below.
If -B is given, <new-branch> is created if it doesn’t exist;
otherwise, it is reset. This is the transactional equivalent
of
$ git branch -f <branch> [<start-point>]
$ git checkout <branch>
that is to say, the branch is not reset/created unless "git
checkout" is successful (e.g., when the branch is in use in
another worktree, not just the current branch stays the same,
but the branch is not reset to the start-point, either).
git checkout --detach [<branch>], git checkout [--detach] <commit>
Prepare to work on top of <commit>, by detaching HEAD at it
(see "DETACHED HEAD" section), and updating the index and the
files in the working tree. Local modifications to the files in
the working tree are kept, so that the resulting working tree
will be the state recorded in the commit plus the local
modifications.
When the <commit> argument is a branch name, the --detach
option can be used to detach HEAD at the tip of the branch
(git checkout <branch> would check out that branch without
detaching HEAD).
Omitting <branch> detaches HEAD at the tip of the current
branch.
git checkout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>]
[<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>..., git checkout
[-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>]
--pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul]
Overwrite the contents of the files that match the pathspec.
When the <tree-ish> (most often a commit) is not given,
overwrite working tree with the contents in the index. When
the <tree-ish> is given, overwrite both the index and the
working tree with the contents at the <tree-ish>.
The index may contain unmerged entries because of a previous
failed merge. By default, if you try to check out such an
entry from the index, the checkout operation will fail and
nothing will be checked out. Using -f will ignore these
unmerged entries. The contents from a specific side of the
merge can be checked out of the index by using --ours or
--theirs. With -m, changes made to the working tree file can
be discarded to re-create the original conflicted merge
result.
git checkout (-p|--patch) [<tree-ish>] [--] [<pathspec>...]
This is similar to the previous mode, but lets you use the
interactive interface to show the "diff" output and choose
which hunks to use in the result. See below for the
description of --patch option.
-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, regardless 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 directories that are in the
way.
When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon
unmerged entries; 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>
Creates the branch <new-branch>, start it at <start-point>; if
it already exists, then reset it to <start-point>. And then
check the resulting branch out. This is equivalent to running
git branch with -f followed by git checkout of that branch;
see git-branch(1) for details.
-t, --track[=(direct|inherit)]
When creating a new branch, set up "upstream" configuration.
See --track in git-branch(1) for details.
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.autoSetupMerge configuration variable is true.
--guess, --no-guess
If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking
branch in exactly 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 "DETACHED 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, repopulating 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 order to preserve your
modifications in context. However, with this option, 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 edits 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 submodules 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-submodule(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 appear 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 separated 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 becomes "detached" and you are no longer on
any branch (see below for details).
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 index 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).
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 commits, one of them tagged, and with branch master checked
out:
HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
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v
a---b---c branch 'master' (refers to commit 'c')
^
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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 parent 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')
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v
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
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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 referenced 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')
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v
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
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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')
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v
e
/
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
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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')
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v
e---f
/
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
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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')
^
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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 routine 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
When there is only one argument given and it is not -- (e.g. git
checkout abc), and when the argument is both a valid <tree-ish>
(e.g. a branch abc exists) and a valid <pathspec> (e.g. a file or
a directory whose name is "abc" exists), Git would usually ask you
to disambiguate. Because checking out a branch is so common an
operation, however, git checkout abc takes "abc" as a <tree-ish>
in such a situation. Use git checkout -- <pathspec> if you want to
checkout these paths out of the index.
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
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 <something> branch on another remote, and by
git-worktree(1) when git worktree 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
repositories located on SSDs or over NFS. For repositories
on spinning disks and/or machines with a small number of
cores, the default sequential 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 minimum number of files for
which parallel checkout should be attempted. The default is
100.
git-switch(1), git-restore(1)
Part of the git(1) suite
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-CHECKOUT(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-checkout(1), git-commit(1), git-config(1), git-restore(1), git-stash(1), git-switch(1), git-worktree(1), githooks(5), gitrepository-layout(5)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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