How do I rename a local Git branch?

Question

I don\'t want to rename a remote branch, as described in Rename master branch for both local and remote Git repositories.

How can I rename a local branch wh

Answer 1

If you want to rename a branch while pointed to any branch, do:

git branch -m  

If you want to rename the current branch, you can do:

git branch -m 

A way to remember this is -m is for "move" (or mv), which is how you rename files. Adding an alias could also help. To do so, run the following:

git config --global alias.rename 'branch -m'

If you are on Windows or another case-insensitive filesystem, and there are only capitalization changes in the name, you need to use -M, otherwise, git will throw branch already exists error:

git branch -M