How to get back to the latest commit after checking out a previous commit

Question

I sometimes check out some previous version of the code to examine or test   I have seen instructions on what to do if I wish to modify previous commits -- but suppose I make no changes   After I ve done e g  git checkout HEAD   how do I get back to the tip of the branch    git log no longer shows me the SHA of the latest commit

User · Answer

git reflog   find the hash of the commit that you want to checkout git checkout  lt commit number gt  gt

User · Answer

If your latest commit is on the master branch  you can simply use  git checkout master

User · Answer

Have a look at the graphical GUI     gitk it shows all commits  Sometimes it is easier to work graphical

User · Answer

Came across this question just now and have something to add  To go to the most recent commit   git checkout   git log --branches -1 --pretty format   H     Explanation   git log --branches shows log of commits from all local branches -1 limit to one commit  rarr  most recent commit --pretty format   H  format to only show commit hash git checkout        use output of subshell as argument for checkout  Note   This will result in a detached head though  because we checkout directly to the commit   This can be avoided by extracting the branch name using sed  explained below     To go to the branch of the most recent commit   git checkout   git log --branches -1 --pretty format   D    sed  s       g     Explanation   git log --branches shows log of commits from all local branches -1 limit to one commit  rarr  most recent commit --pretty format   D  format to only show ref names   sed  s       g  ignore all but the last of multiple refs     git checkout        use output of subshell as argument for checkout     HEAD and remote branches are listed first  local branches are listed last in alphabetically descending order  so the one remaining will be the alphabetically first branch name  Note   This will always only use the  alphabetically  first branch name if there are multiple for that commit     Anyway  I think the best solution would just be to display the ref names for the most recent commit to know where to checkout to   git log --branches -1 --pretty format   D    E g  create the alias git top for that command

User · Answer

If you know the commit you want to return to is the head of some branch  or is tagged  then you can just  git checkout branchname   You can also use git reflog to see what other commits your HEAD  or any other ref  has pointed to in the past     Edited to add   In newer versions of Git  if you only ran git checkout or something else to move your HEAD once  you can also do   git checkout -   to switch back to wherever it was before the last checkout  This was motivated by the analogy to the shell idiom cd - to go back to whatever working directory one was previously in

User · Answer

If you have a branch different than master  one easy way is to check out that branch  then check out master   Voila  you are back at the tip of master    There s probably smarter ways

User · Answer

show all branches and commit  git log --branches --oneline  show last commit  git log --branches -1 --oneline  show before last commit  git log --branches -2 --oneline

User · Answer

git checkout master  master is the tip  or the last commit   gitk will only show you up to where you are in the tree at the time   git reflog will show all the commits  but in this case  you just want the tip  so git checkout master

User · Answer

You can simply do git pull origin branchname  It will fetch the latest commit again

User · Answer

You can use one of the following git command for this   git checkout master git checkout branchname

[git] How to get back to the latest commit after checking out a previous commit?

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