GIT-CHECKOUT(1)

📦
version 2.56.0 · 25 versions
, in arch rolling

🌸 NAME 🌸

git-checkout — Switch branches or restore working tree files. Welcome to the GIT-CHECKOUT(1) page from the Git Manual, bestie 💖

🌀 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 🦋

Okay so git checkout has two main modes, and this is important, bestie:

  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 it’s doing 👀

git checkout [<branch>] — switch to <branch>, periodt. This sets the current branch to <branch> and updates the files in your working directory. The checkout will fail if there are uncommitted changes to any files where <branch> and your current commit have different content. Uncommitted changes will otherwise be kept, so don’t panic 💖

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>

Running git checkout without specifying a branch has no effect except to print out the tracking information for the current branch. Lowkey just a lil info dump.

git checkout -b <new-branch> [<start-point>] — create a new branch named <new-branch>, start it at <start-point> (defaults 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 example if checking out the <start-point> commit would overwrite your uncommitted changes. No cap, it really will.

git checkout -B <branch> [<start-point>] — same as -b, except that if the branch already exists it resets <branch> to the start point instead of failing. It’s giving “redo but make it official” 💅

git checkout --detach [<branch>], git checkout [--detach] <commit> — 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. Iconic but slightly unhinged.

git checkout <tree-ish> [--] <pathspec>..., git checkout <tree-ish> --pathspec-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 the “staging area”). Bestie, it’s literally a time machine for files 🕰️

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>] --pathspec-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. Poof, gone 💨

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 interactive interface to show the “diff” output and choose which hunks to use in the result. See below for the description of --patch option. Interactive queen behavior, fr fr 🌸

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -q, --quiet — quiet mode, bestie: suppress feedback messages. Shhh 🤫
  • --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. So yes, it can be loud on purpose 📣
  • -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. Danger, bestie: this is literally the “yeet my local stuff” button 💀

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”). This is highkey a plot twist, but that’s the lore 📖

  • -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. New branch, who dis? 🌱
  • -B <new-branch> — same as -b, except that if the branch already exists it resets <branch> to the start point instead of failing. It’s the “reset the branch and pretend we meant to” option 💅
  • -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. Name-guessing sorcery, iykyk 🪄

  • --no-track — do not set up “upstream” configuration, even if the branch.autoSetupMerge configuration variable is true. Respectfully, no tracking today 🚫
  • --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>. Yep, it’s the same little trick again.

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. Defaults are giving “I got you” until you say otherwise 💖

  • -l — create the new branch’s reflog; see git-branch(1) for details. Logs for the new branch, because receipts matter 📝
  • -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. Detached HEAD era, let’s go 👑
  • --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. Orphan branch is giving main character energy with no backstory 🌈

  • --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>.... Sparse checkout said “skip these,” and this flag said “not today” 🙈
  • -m, --merge — okay so bestie, imagine you've got local edits to some files that are different between the branch you're on and the branch you're hopping to. Normally git checkout will straight-up refuse to switch, just to keep your edits safe in context. With this flag, those conflicting local changes get auto-stashed before the switch and reapplied right after. 💅 And if your local changes don't overlap with the diff between branches, the switch just... proceeds, no stashing needed. Iconic. If reapplying the stash turns messy with conflicts, the entry stays saved in the stash list — resolve the conflicts and run git stash drop when you're done, or clear the working tree (e.g. with git reset --hard) before running git stash pop later to re-apply your changes.

Also! When checking out paths from the index, this option lets you recreate the conflicted merge in the specified paths. But heads up: this option cannot be used when checking out paths from a tree-ish. 🚫

  • --conflict=<style> — same energy as --merge above, but it changes how the conflicting hunks are presented, overriding the merge.conflictStyle config variable. Possible values are merge (default), diff3, and zdiff3. Pick your fighter. ✨
  • -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 too).

Which means — huge — you can use git checkout -p to selectively discard edits from your current working tree. Slay. See the "Interactive Mode" section of git-add(1) to learn how to operate the --patch mode.

Ngl, 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. The number of context lines defaults to diff.context, or 3 if that configuration variable is unset. (And yes — -U without <n> is silently accepted as a synonym for -p due to a historical accident. We don't talk about it. 💀)
  • --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. Chaos, but consensual chaos. 🔥
  • --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> — the 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. Periodt. 🛑
  • <pathspec>... — limits the paths affected by the operation.

For more details, see the pathspec entry in gitglossary(7).

🌸 DETACHED HEAD 🌸

Okay bestie, this is the part where it gets dramatic. 😭

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')
                |
                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 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')
                |
                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 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')
    |
    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 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

🫶 ARGUMENT DISAMBIGUATION 🫶

When you run git checkout <something>, Git tries to guess whether <something> 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. It's giving mind reader, lowkey. 🔮

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

Main character energy from --, honestly. 💅

🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

1. Paths 🛤️

This lil’ sequence checks out the master branch, reverts Makefile to two revisions back, deletes hello.c by mistake, then gets it back from the index. Iconic recovery arc, honestly.

$ 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). Periodt.

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 will carry your local changes to the new branch:

$ git checkout -m mytopic
Applied autostash.
Switched to branch 'mytopic'
The following paths have local changes:
M       frotz

After the switch, the local modifications are reapplied and are not registered in your index file, so git diff would show you what changes you made since the tip of the new branch. No cap, that’s the whole vibe of -m.

3. Merge conflict 💀

When the --merge (-m) option is given and the local changes overlap with the changes in the branch we’re switching to, the changes are stashed and reapplied after the switch. If this process results in conflicts, the stash entry is saved and a message is printed:

$ git checkout -m mytopic
Your local changes are stashed, however applying them
resulted in conflicts.  You can either resolve the conflicts
and then discard the stash with "git stash drop", or, if you
do not want to resolve them now, run "git reset --hard" and
apply the local changes later by running "git stash pop".

⚙️ 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 <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.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

🫶 GIT 🫶

Part of the git(1) suite.

💖 and that’s the whole page, bestie! 💖 The source/version is Git 2.56.0, and the date is 2026-09-27. Stay iconic. 💅

📦 where this page comes from