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.

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 <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.

       -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 2.51.0			  2025-08-17			 GIT-SWITCH(1)