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Git is a widely known, in-demand, and popular version control system (VCS) that is commonly used by software developers to collaborate on code development in small or large teams. It helps us coordinate our work and helps us track the changes in the source code during the software development process.

Git branches play a very important and unique role in developing our projects in a team environment. Branches provide us a track to work with our main (master) branch while keeping it free of clutter and incomplete code in a separate branch.

Sometimes we are in a hurry when developing branches and come across a situation where we have named a branch incorrectly, which does not match our code or does not describe it accurately and looks inaccurate. Then, we want to rename the branch.

Most of the time, renaming branches is due to the above mentioned situations. So, in this article, we will learn to change the name of a local Git branch using the techniques mentioned below.

Rename a local branch in Git

In Git, if we want to rename a branch, we will follow the steps mentioned below to achieve our purpose.

1. Before we begin, we should make sure we have selected the branch we want to rename by entering the branch name by using the following command.

   $git checkout old-name
   

2. After selecting the correct branch, we will use the command aliased as -mgit branch .

   $ git branch -m new-name
   

   Alternatively, we can also use a single command. If we are not already present in master, we will switch to it.

   $ git checkout master
   

3. After running the checkout command above , we will run the following command to change the branch name.

   $ git branch -m old-name new-name
   

   Now, our branch name has been changed.
4. To verify that the name has changed, we will recheck it by running the following command.

   $ git branch -a
   

   If we wanted to see the correct names of all our local branches, we would run the following command.

   $ git branch --list
   

From the above Git commands, we have seen that we can easily change our local branch name from old to new without any problem.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to change the name of your local branch for any reason, you can follow the above steps to successfully change the name.