When using Git for version control, a quick way to switch back to your previous branch is the following:
$ git checkout -
For example, suppose you have two branches:
$ git branch
master
* test
You are on branch test
(indicated by the *
) and, assuming you came from branch master
, switching back to branch master
only requires git checkout -
.
Here’s a quick demo:
$ git branch
master
* test
$ git checkout -
Switched to branch 'master'
$ git checkout -
Switched to branch 'test'
This comes in handy when experimenting with new features and switching between previous branches regularly.
Aside from its utility, git checkout -
is cool because it’s not mentioned in the documentation, so it’s a bit of an insider secret. 😉