Git: How do I force "git pull" to overwrite local files?

⚠ Important: If you have any local changes, they will be lost. With or without --hard option, any local commits that haven't been pushed will be lost.^[*]

If you have any files that are not tracked by Git (e.g. uploaded user content), these files will not be affected.

First, run a fetch to update all origin/<branch> refs to latest:

git fetch --all

Backup your current branch:

git branch backup-master

Then, you have two options:

git reset --hard origin/master

OR If you are on some other branch:

git reset --hard origin/<branch_name>

Explanation:

git fetch downloads the latest from remote without trying to merge or rebase anything.

Then the git reset resets the master branch to what you just fetched. The --hard option changes all the files in your working tree to match the files in origin/master

Maintain current local commits

^[*]: It's worth noting that it is possible to maintain current local commits by creating a branch from master before resetting:

git checkout mastergit branch new-branch-to-save-current-commitsgit fetch --allgit reset --hard origin/master

After this, all of the old commits will be kept in new-branch-to-save-current-commits.

Uncommitted changes

Uncommitted changes, however (even staged), will be lost. Make sure to stash and commit anything you need. For that you can run the following:

git stash

And then to reapply these uncommitted changes:

git stash pop

Try this:

git reset --hard HEADgit pull

It should do what you want.

WARNING: git clean deletes all your untracked files/directories and can't be undone.

Sometimes just clean -f does not help. In case you have untracked DIRECTORIES, -d option also needed:

# WARNING: this can't be undone!git reset --hard HEADgit clean -f -dgit pull

WARNING: git clean deletes all your untracked files/directories and can't be undone.

Consider using -n (--dry-run) flag first. This will show you what will be deleted without actually deleting anything:

git clean -n -f -d

Example output:

Would remove untracked-file-1.txtWould remove untracked-file-2.txtWould remove untracked/folder...