GIT-SWITCH(1) Git Manual GIT-SWITCH(1)

NAME

git-switch - Switch branches

SYNOPSIS

git switch [<options>] [--no-guess] <branch>
git switch [<options>] --detach [<start-point>]
git switch [<options>] (-c|-C) <new-branch> [<start-point>]
git switch [<options>] --orphan <new-branch>

DESCRIPTION

Switch to a specified branch. The working tree and the index are
updated to match the branch. All new commits will be added to the tip
of this branch.

Optionally a new branch could be created with either -c, -C,
automatically from a remote branch of same name (see --guess), or
detach the working tree from any branch with --detach, along with
switching.

Switching branches does not require a clean index and working tree
(i.e. no differences compared to HEAD). The operation is aborted
however if the operation leads to loss of local changes, unless told
otherwise with --discard-changes or --merge.

THIS COMMAND IS EXPERIMENTAL. THE BEHAVIOR MAY CHANGE.

OPTIONS

<branch>
Branch to switch to.

<new-branch>
Name for the new branch.

<start-point>
The starting point for the new branch. Specifying a <start-point>
allows you to create a branch based on some other point in
history than where HEAD currently points. (Or, in the case of
--detach, allows you to inspect and detach from some other
point.)

You can use the @{-N} syntax to refer to the N-th last
branch/commit switched to using "git switch" or "git checkout"
operation. You may also specify - which is synonymous to @{-1}.
This is often used to switch quickly between two branches, or to
undo a branch switch by mistake.

As a special case, you may use A...B as a shortcut for the merge
base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base. You can leave
out at most one of A and B, in which case it defaults to HEAD.

-c <new-branch>, --create <new-branch>
Create a new branch named <new-branch> starting at <start-point>
before switching to the branch. This is the transactional
equivalent of

$ git branch <new-branch>
$ git switch <new-branch>

that is to say, the branch is not reset/created unless "git
switch" 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).

-C <new-branch>, --force-create <new-branch>
Similar to --create except that if <new-branch> already exists,
it will be reset to <start-point>. This is a convenient shortcut
for:

$ git branch -f <new-branch>
$ git switch <new-branch>

-d, --detach
Switch to a commit for inspection and discardable experiments.
See the "DETACHED HEAD" section in git-checkout(1) for details.

--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 switch -c <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.

-f, --force
An alias for --discard-changes.

--discard-changes
Proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD.
Both the index and working tree are restored to match the
switching target. If --recurse-submodules is specified, submodule
content is also restored to match the switching target. This is
used to throw away local changes.

-m, --merge
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).

--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".

-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.

-t, --track [direct|inherit]
When creating a new branch, set up "upstream" configuration. -c
is implied. See --track in git-branch(1) for details.

If no -c 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 -c in such a case.

--no-track
Do not set up "upstream" configuration, even if the
branch.autoSetupMerge configuration variable is true.

--orphan <new-branch>
Create a new unborn branch, named <new-branch>. All tracked files
are removed.

--ignore-other-worktrees
git switch refuses when the wanted ref is already checked out by
another worktree. This option makes it check the ref out anyway.
In other words, the ref can be held by more than one worktree.

--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 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 submodules.

EXAMPLES

The following command switches to the "master" branch:

$ git switch master

After working in the wrong branch, switching to the correct branch
would be done using:

$ git switch mytopic

However, your "wrong" branch and correct "mytopic" branch may differ
in files that you have modified locally, in which case the above
switch would fail like this:

$ git switch 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 switch -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.

To switch back to the previous branch before we switched to mytopic
(i.e. "master" branch):

$ git switch -

You can grow a new branch from any commit. For example, switch to
"HEAD~3" and create branch "fixup":

$ git switch -c fixup HEAD~3
Switched to a new branch 'fixup'

If you want to start a new branch from a remote branch of the same
name:

$ git switch new-topic
Branch 'new-topic' set up to track remote branch 'new-topic' from 'origin'
Switched to a new branch 'new-topic'

To check out commit HEAD~3 for temporary inspection or experiment
without creating a new branch:

$ git switch --detach HEAD~3
HEAD is now at 9fc9555312 Merge branch 'cc/shared-index-permbits'

If it turns out whatever you have done is worth keeping, you can
always create a new name for it (without switching away):

$ git switch -c good-surprises

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-checkout(1), git-branch(1)

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-SWITCH(1)