How do I rename a local Git branch?

git version-control git-branch
Forrest picture Forrest · Jul 6, 2011 · Viewed 3.2M times · Source

I don't want to rename a remote branch, as described in Rename master branch for both local and remote Git repositories.

How can I rename a local branch which hasn't been pushed to a remote branch?

In case you need to rename remote branch as well:
How do I rename both a Git local and remote branch name

Answer

siride picture siride · Jul 6, 2011

If you want to rename a branch while pointed to any branch, do:

git branch -m <oldname> <newname>

If you want to rename the current branch, you can do:

git branch -m <newname>

A way to remember this is -m is for "move" (or mv), which is how you rename files. Adding an alias could also help. To do so, run the following:

git config --global alias.rename 'branch -m'

If you are on Windows or another case-insensitive filesystem, and there are only capitalization changes in the name, you need to use -M, otherwise, git will throw branch already exists error:

git branch -M <newname>

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