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Git branches are helpful because they enable developers to work on different features without affecting each other's work. In this article, we will learn how to rename local and remote Git branches in case we made a mistake or want our projects to be better organized in a team.

Rename local Git branch

Suppose we are working on our project and name a branch feature, but later, we realize that we need to rename it to release or something else. We will rename it by using the rename subcommand and passing it the old name and the new name, like this:

git branch -m feature release  

In detail, make sure we have selected the branch we want to rename. We will run this command to do the required work.

git checkout old-name

So, we have to replace the old name with the new name of the desired branch. If we want to see all local branches in the form of a list, then we have to run the following command:

git branch --list

Once we have selected the correct branch to rename, follow the steps below. When we use the Git branch command, add a -m option in the given line. Then, rename the branch by executing the following command.

git branch -m old-name **new**-name

Finally, execute this command to list all local Git branches and confirm that the rename was completed successfully:

git branch -a

Rename a remote Git branch

As we've seen, we can easily rename local branches that we've set up on our personal computers. However, we may want to rename branches that we've published to a shared repository. Git doesn't allow us to rename remote branches (even though technically we can change the remote branch name to anything we want).

So when we have a branch that we want to change its name, we have to do some extra steps to rename it compared to our local branch.

First, we have to create a new branch with the new name; then we will have to delete the old one. This is because remote branches are not actually on the server, only their names are. We have to create and delete them locally in our personal space.

To create a new branch, we can use -bthe -d remote-branch flag to specify an existing branch to use as its base. Once we have created the new branch, we can -ddelete the old branch using the -d remote-branch flag and the remote branch name.

Suppose we have a featureremote branch called releases and we need to rename it to releases. We can do this by running

git push -d feature release

It will delete the remote feature branch and replace it with the local release branch. When we pull from the shared repository, it changes to the remote release branch.

Rename Git branch in one step

Fortunately, Git has a one-step command for renaming branches. It's called git branch -r. If we run it, it will rename the current branch to the new name we specify.

git branch -r feature release 

This will rename our current branch from feature to release. It will also change the local branch to master. This section shows us how to rename both local and remote branches.

However, we might notice that if we run git branch we still see the old name of the renamed branch. If we want to see the new name, we can use git branch -rthe command. This command shows all of our branches, including their old and new names:

git branch -r release * release master

This section shows us how to rename local and remote branches. However, it is a bit strange that we have to create a new branch first and then delete the old branch.