Is there any way to git checkout previous branch?

git git-checkout
Matt Briggs picture Matt Briggs · Aug 26, 2011 · Viewed 84.4k times · Source

I sort of want the equivalent of cd - for git. If I am in branch master and I checkout foo, I would love to be able to type something like git checkout - to go back to master, and be able to type it again to return to foo.

Does anything like this exist? Would it be hard to implement?

Answer

Karl Bielefeldt picture Karl Bielefeldt · Aug 26, 2011

From the release notes for 1.6.2

@{-1} is a way to refer to the last branch you were on. This is
accepted not only where an object name is expected, but anywhere a branch name is expected and acts as if you typed the branch name.
E.g. git branch --track mybranch @{-1}, git merge @{-1}, and
git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name @{-1} would work as expected.

and

git checkout - is a shorthand for git checkout @{-1}.

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