Ryan Greenberg

I move back and forth between two branches somewhat often in git (“The tests are failing on my branch—are they failing on main?” (They were not)).

I found git checkout - which is great for this. It checks out the branch or ref that you were on most recently. It reminds me of cd -, which switches to your most recent directory. Running this multiple times will bounce you back and forth between the branches.

$ git checkout -b git_commands
Switched to a new branch 'git_commands'

$ git checkout -
Switched to branch 'main'
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main'.

$ git checkout -
Switched to branch 'git_commands'

I grew up in the era where git checkout was the command you used for five different things. Git 2.23 introduced git switch explicitly for switching branches. git switch - works the same way.