Copy files from another branch in Git

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Copy files from another branch in Git

Author：JIYIK Last Updated：2025/04/03 Views：

In Git, merging various files can lead to a lot of conflicts. Through these merge conflicts, our files may be compromised, so we have to copy these files or folders from one branch to another to keep them safe.

A popular approach is cherry picking. But if we don't want to do that, we have a better approach: branching from a remote git checkout.

Use the git checkout command to copy files from another branch in Git

The git checkout command is used to change branches and restore files in the working tree. It is also used to operate files, folders, and commits.

This article will show you how to use git checkoutthe command to copy single or multiple folders or files from one branch to another without merging the entire branch with the other branch.

Following are the commands we can use to copy files from other branches. It depends on where we want to get the files from (local branch, commit or remote branch).

We can git statuscheck which branch we are on by running the command:

$ git status

After that, we will create a file and commit it to another branch.

$c git checkout -b new_branch

$ git add test.txt

$ git commit -m "Create test"

Now, we will switch to the master branch again.

$ git checkout master

We will check out the files from the other branch to copy the files.

$ git checkout new_branch test.txt

Finally, our file is successfully copied to our current branch. Therefore, we can check it using the following command.

$ git status

Use the git checkout command to copy one or more files from another branch in Git

For single or multiple files we will run the following command:

$ git checkout <other-branch-name> -- path/to/your/file.

Use the git checkout command to copy a folder from another branch in Git

To copy this entire folder to our current branch, we would execute the following command:

git checkout <other-branch-name> -- path/to/your/folder

Use the git checkout command to copy files and folders from a commit in another branch.

To copy some files or folders from a specific commit in another branch, we would run this command:

git checkout <commit_hash> <relative_path_to_file_or_dir>

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