How do I remove a single file from the staging area undo git add

Question

Situation  I have a Git repository with files already in the index   I make changes to several files  open Git and add these files to my staging area with  git add     Question  How do I remove one of those files from the staging area but not remove it from the index or undo the changes to the file itself

User · Accepted Answer

If I understand the question correctly  you simply want to  undo  the git add that was done for that file   If you need to remove a single file from the staging area  use  git reset HEAD --  lt file gt   If you need to remove a whole directory  folder  from the staging area  use  git reset HEAD --  lt directoryName gt   Your modifications will be kept  When you run git status the file will once again show up as modified but not yet staged   See the git reset man page for details

User · Answer

git rm --cached FILE      git rm -r --cached CVS   CVS

User · Answer

So  a slight tweak to Tim Henigan s answer  you need to use -- before the file name  It would look like this   git reset HEAD --  lt file gt

User · Answer

For newer versions of Git there is git restore --staged  lt file gt    When I do a git status with Git version 2 26 2 windows 1 it is also recommended for unstaging   Changes to be committed     use  git restore --staged  lt file gt      to unstage     This post shows  that in earlier versions git reset HEAD was recommended at this point   I can highly recommend this post explaining the differences between git revert  git restore and git reset and also additional parameters for git restore

User · Answer

git reset filename txt   If you have a modification in filename txt   you added it to stage by mistake and you want to remove the file from staging but you don t want to lose the changes

User · Answer

In case you just want to remove a subset of the changes to your file  you can use   git reset -p   or  git reset -p  lt file name gt    This command is basically the reverse of git add -p  it will only remove the selected changes from the staging area  I find it extremely useful in  unadding  something that I added by mistake

User · Answer

To unstage everything at once  run this command  git reset HEAD --

User · Answer

You need to be in the directory of the file and then type the following into the terminal git checkout --  lt file gt

User · Answer

You need to be in the directory of the file and then type the following into the terminal  git reset HEAD     Assumption is that you need to reset one file only

User · Answer

You want    Affect to a single file Remove file from staging area Not remove single file from index Don t undo the change itself   and the solution is  git reset HEAD file name ext   or  git reset HEAD path to file file name ext

User · Answer

git reset  lt file gt   Works whether or not you have any previous commits

User · Answer

If you make changes to many tracked files but only want to stage a few of them  doing a   git add    isn t always favorable  or recommended - as it stages all the tracked files  some cases where you want to keep changes only to yourself and don t want to stage them to the remote repository    nor is it ideal doing a bunch of   git add path to file1 path to file2   if you have a lot of nested directories  which is the case in most projects  - gets annoying  That s when Git GUI is helpful  probably only time I use it   Just open Git GUI  it shows staged and unstaged file sections  Select the files from the staged section that you want to unstage and press      Ctrl U  for windows    to unstage them

User · Answer

If you want to remove files following a certain pattern and you are using git rm --cached  you can use file-glob patterns too   See here

User · Answer

After version 2 23  Git has introduced the git restore command which you can use to do that  Quoting the official documentation      Restore specified paths in the working tree with some contents from a   restore source  If a path is tracked but does not exist in the restore   source  it will be removed to match the source       The command can also be used to restore the content in the index with   --staged  or restore both the working tree and the index with --staged --worktree    So you can invoke git restore --staged  lt path gt  and unstage the file but also keep the changes you made  Remember that if the file was not staged you lose all the changes you made to it

User · Answer

When you do git status  Git tells you how to unstage   Changes to be committed   use  git reset HEAD  lt file gt      to unstage     So git reset HEAD  lt file gt  worked for me and the changes were un-touched

User · Answer

My sample     git status On branch feature wildfire VNL-425-update-wrong-translation Your branch and  origin feature wildfire VNL-425-update-wrong-translation  have diverged  and have 4 and 1 different commits each  respectively     use  git pull  to merge the remote branch into yours   Changes to be committed     use  git reset HEAD  lt file gt      to unstage       modified    ShopBack Source Date Extension swift     modified    ShopBack Source InboxData swift     modified    ShopBack en lproj Localizable strings   As you may notice   gt  Changes to be committed   gt         use  git reset HEAD  lt file gt      to unstage

User · Answer

git checkout --  lt file gt   It works perfectly to remove files from Staging Area

User · Answer

I think you probably got confused with the concept of index  as  CB Bailey commented      The staging area is the index    You can simply consider staging directory and index as the same thing  So  just like  Tim Henigan s answer  I guess      you simply want to  undo  the git add that was done for that file     Here is my answer   Commonly  there are two ways to undo a stage operation  as other answers already mentioned   git reset HEAD  lt file gt    and   git rm --cached  lt file gt    But what is the difference   Assume the file has been staged and exists in working directory too  use git rm --cached  lt file gt  if you want to remove it from staging directory  and keep the file in working directory  But notice that this operation will not only remove the file from staging directory but also mark the file as deleted in staging directory  if you use  git status   after this operation  you will see this            deleted      lt file gt    It s a record of removing the file from staging directory  If you don t want to keep that record and just simply want to undo a previous stage operation of a file  use git reset HEAD  lt file gt  instead    -------- END OF ANSWER --------   PS  I have noticed some answers mentioned    git checkout --  lt file gt    This command is for the situation when the file has been staged  but the file has been modified in working directory after it was staged  use this operation to restore the file in working directory from staging directory  In other words  after this operation  changes happen in your working directory  NOT your staging directory

[git] How do I remove a single file from the staging area (undo git add)?

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