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
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.
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.
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.
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>
--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 "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>]
--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.
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.
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, 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>
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.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).
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
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.
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-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(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-switch(1), git-restore(1)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 2.52.0 2025-11-17 git-checkout(1)
git 2.52.0 - Generated Wed Nov 19 16:03:30 CST 2025