How do I check out a remote Git branch?

The answer has been split depending on whether there is one remote repository configured or multiple. The reason for this is that for the single remote case, some of the commands can be simplified as there is less ambiguity.

Updated for Git 2.23: For older versions, see the section at the end.

With One Remote

In both cases, start by fetching from the remote repository to make sure you have all the latest changes downloaded.

$ git fetch

This will fetch all of the remote branches for you. You can see the branches available for checkout with:

$ git branch -v -a

...
remotes/origin/test

The branches that start with remotes/* can be thought of as read only copies of the remote branches. To work on a branch you need to create a local branch from it. This is done with the Git command switch (since Git 2.23) by giving it the name of the remote branch (minus the remote name):

$ git switch test

In this case Git is guessing (can be disabled with --no-guess) that you are trying to checkout and track the remote branch with the same name.

With Multiple Remotes

In the case where multiple remote repositories exist, the remote repository needs to be explicitly named.

As before, start by fetching the latest remote changes:

$ git fetch origin

This will fetch all of the remote branches for you. You can see the branches available for checkout with:

$ git branch -v -a

With the remote branches in hand, you now need to check out the branch you are interested in with -c to create a new local branch:

$ git switch -c test origin/test

For more information about using git switch:

$ man git-switch

I also created the image below for you to share the differences, look at how to fetch works, and also how it's different to pull:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/zBb51.png

Prior to Git 2.23

git switch was added in Git 2.23, prior to this git checkout was used to switch branches.

To checkout out with only a single remote repository:

git checkout test

if there there are multiple remote repositories configured it becomes a bit longer

git checkout -b test <name of remote>/test

---

Sidenote: With modern Git (>= 1.6.6), you are able to use just

git checkout test

(note that it is 'test' not 'origin/test') to perform magical DWIM-mery and create local branch 'test' for you, for which upstream would be remote-tracking branch 'origin/test'.

The * (no branch) in git branch output means that you are on unnamed branch, in so called "detached HEAD" state (HEAD points directly to commit, and is not symbolic reference to some local branch). If you made some commits on this unnamed branch, you can always create local branch off current commit:

git checkout -b test HEAD

A more modern approach as suggested in the comments:

@Dennis: git checkout , for example git checkout origin/test results in detached HEAD / unnamed branch, while git checkout test or git checkout -b test origin/test results in local branch test (with remote-tracking branch origin/test as upstream) – Jakub Narębski Jan 9 '14 at 8:17

emphasis on git checkout origin/test

---

In this case, you probably want to create a local test branch which is tracking the remote test branch:

$ git branch test origin/test

In earlier versions of git, you needed an explicit --track option, but that is the default now when you are branching off a remote branch.

To create the local branch and switch to it, use:

$ git checkout -b test origin/test

---

Accepted answer not working for you?

While the first and selected answer is technically correct, there's the possibility you have not yet retrieved all objects and refs from the remote repository. If that is the case, you'll receive the following error:

$ git checkout -b remote_branch origin/remote_branch

fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches. Did you intend to checkout 'origin/remote_branch' which can not be resolved as commit?

Solution

If you receive this message, you must first do a git fetch origin where origin is the name of the remote repository prior to running git checkout remote_branch. Here's a full example with responses:

$ git fetch origin
remote: Counting objects: 140, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (30/30), done.
remote: Total 69 (delta 36), reused 66 (delta 33)
Unpacking objects: 100% (69/69), done.
From https://github.com/githubuser/repo-name
   e6ef1e0..5029161  develop    -> origin/develop
 * [new branch]      demo       -> origin/demo
   d80f8d7..359eab0  master     -> origin/master

$ git checkout demo
Branch demo set up to track remote branch demo from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'demo'

As you can see, running git fetch origin retrieved any remote branches we were not yet setup to track on our local machine. From there, since we now have a ref to the remote branch, we can simply run git checkout remote_branch and we'll gain the benefits of remote tracking.

---

I tried the above solution, but it didn't work. Try this, it works:

git fetch origin 'remote_branch':'local_branch_name'

This will fetch the remote branch and create a new local branch (if not exists already) with name local_branch_name and track the remote one in it.

---

This will DWIM for a remote not named origin (documentation):

$ git checkout -t remote_name/remote_branch

To add a new remote, you will need to do the following first:

$ git remote add remote_name location_of_remote
$ git fetch remote_name

The first tells Git the remote exists, the second gets the commits.

---

Use:

git checkout -b <BRANCH-NAME> <REMOTE-NAME>/<BRANCH-NAME>

Other answers do not work with modern Git in my benign case. You might need to pull first if the remote branch is new, but I haven't checked that case.

---

You basically see the branch, but you don't have a local copy yet!...

You need to fetch the branch...

You can simply fetch and then checkout to the branch, use the one line command below to do that:

git fetch && git checkout test

I also created the image below for you to share the differences, look at how fetch works and also how it's different to pull:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/ODFYa.png

---

To clone a Git repository, do:

git clone <either ssh url /http url>

The above command checks out all of the branches, but only the master branch will be initialized. If you want to checkout the other branches, do:

git checkout -t origin/future_branch (for example)

This command checks out the remote branch, and your local branch name will be same as the remote branch.

If you want to override your local branch name on checkout:

git checkout -t -b enhancement origin/future_branch

Now your local branch name is enhancement, but your remote branch name is future_branch.

---

You can try

git fetch remote
git checkout --track -b local_branch_name origin/branch_name

or

git fetch
git checkout -b local_branch_name origin/branch_name

---

I was stuck in a situation seeing error: pathspec 'desired-branch' did not match any file(s) known to git. for all of the suggestions above. I'm on Git version 1.8.3.1.

So this worked for me:

git fetch origin desired-branch
git checkout -b desired-branch FETCH_HEAD

The explanation behind is that I've noticed that when fetching the remote branch, it was fetched to FETCH_HEAD:

git fetch origin desired-branch

From github.com:MYTEAM/my-repo
    * branch            desired-branch -> FETCH_HEAD

---

First, you need to do:

git fetch # If you don't know about branch name

git fetch origin branch_name

Second, you can check out remote branch into your local by:

git checkout -b branch_name origin/branch_name

-b will create new branch in specified name from your selected remote branch.

---

I use the following command:

git checkout --track origin/other_remote_branch

---

Commands

git fetch --all
git checkout -b <ur_new_local_branch_name> origin/<Remote_Branch_Name>

are equal to

 git fetch --all

and then

 git checkout -b fixes_for_dev origin/development

Both will create a latest fixes_for_dev from development

---

Simply run git checkout with the name of the remote branch. Git will automatically create a local branch that tracks the remote one:

git fetch
git checkout test

However, if that branch name is found in more than one remote, this won't work as Git doesn't know which to use. In that case you can use either:

git checkout --track origin/test

or

git checkout -b test origin/test

In 2.19, Git learned the checkout.defaultRemote configuration, which specifies a remote to default to when resolving such an ambiguity.

---

If the branch is on something other than the origin remote I like to do the following:

$ git fetch
$ git checkout -b second/next upstream/next

This will checkout the next branch on the upstream remote in to a local branch called second/next. Which means if you already have a local branch named next it will not conflict.

$ git branch -a
* second/next
  remotes/origin/next
  remotes/upstream/next

---

None of these answers worked for me. This worked:

git checkout -b feature/branch remotes/origin/feature/branch

---

git fetch && git checkout your-branch-name

---

The git remote show <origin name> command will list all branches (including un-tracked branches). Then you can find the remote branch name that you need to fetch.

Example:

$ git remote show origin

Use these steps to fetch remote branches:

git fetch <origin name> <remote branch name>:<local branch name>
git checkout <local branch name > (local branch name should the name that you given fetching)

Example:

$ git fetch origin test:test
$ git checkout test

---

git branch -r says the object name is invalid, because that branch name isn't in Git's local branch list. Update your local branch list from origin with:

git remote update

And then try checking out your remote branch again.

This worked for me.

I believe git fetch pulls in all remote branches, which is not what the original poster wanted.

---

Fetch from the remote and checkout the branch.

git fetch <remote_name> && git checkout <branch_name> 

E.g.:

git fetch origin && git checkout feature/XYZ-1234-Add-alerts

---

Other guys and gals give the solutions, but maybe I can tell you why.

git checkout test which does nothing

Does nothing doesn't equal doesn't work, so I guess when you type 'git checkout test' in your terminal and press enter key, no message appears and no error occurs. Am I right?

If the answer is 'yes', I can tell you the cause.

The cause is that there is a file (or folder) named 'test' in your work tree.

When git checkout xxx parsed,

Git looks on xxx as a branch name at first, but there isn't any branch named test. Then Git thinks xxx is a path, and fortunately (or unfortunately), there is a file named test. So git checkout xxx means discard any modification in xxx file. If there isn't file named xxx either, then Git will try to create the xxx according to some rules. One of the rules is create a branch named xxx if remotes/origin/xxx exists.

---

To get newly created branches

git fetch

To switch into another branch

git checkout BranchName

---

git checkout -b "Branch_name" [ B means Create local branch]

git branch --all

git checkout -b "Your Branch name"

git branch

git pull origin "Your Branch name"

successfully checkout from the master branch to dev branch

https://i.stack.imgur.com/0WQfH.png

---

I always do: git fetch origin && git checkout --track origin/branch_name

---

I used that one:

git clean -fxd                         # removes untracked (new added plus ignored files)

git fetch
git checkout {branchname}

git reset --hard origin/{branchname}   # removes staged and working directory changes

---

You can start tracking all remote branches with the following Bash script:

#!/bin/bash
git fetch --all
for branch in `git branch -r --format="%(refname:short)" | sed 's/origin\///'`
  do git branch -f --track "$branch" "origin/$branch"
done

Here is also a single-line version:

git fetch --all; for branch in `git branch -r --format="%(refname:short)" | sed 's/origin\///'`; do git branch --track "$branch" "origin/$branch" ; done ;

---

For us, it seems the remote.origin.fetch configuration gave a problem. Therefore, we could not see any other remote branches than master, so git fetch [--all] did not help. Neither git checkout mybranch nor git checkout -b mybranch --track origin/mybranch did work, although it certainly was at remote.

The previous configuration only allowed master to be fetched:

$ git config --list | grep fetch
remote.origin.fetch=+refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master

Fix it by using * and fetch the new information from origin:

$ git config remote.origin.fetch '+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*'

$ git fetch
...
 * [new branch] ...
...

Now we could git checkout the remote branch locally.

No idea how this config ended up in our local repo.

---

For some reason, I couldn't do:

$ git checkout -b branch-name origin/branch-name

It was throwing the error:

fatal: 'origin/branch-name' is not a commit and a branch 'branch-name' cannot be created from it

I had to do:

$ git checkout -b branch-name commit-sha

---

to get all remote branches use this :

git fetch --all

then checkout to the branch :

git checkout test

---