If you want to revert changes made to your working copy, do this:

git checkout .

If you want to revert changes made to the index (i.e., that you have added), do this. Warning this will reset all of your unpushed commits to master!:

git reset

If you want to revert a change that you have committed, do this:

git revert <commit 1> <commit 2>

If you want to remove untracked files (e.g., new files, generated files):

git clean -f

Or untracked directories (e.g., new or automatically generated directories):

git clean -fd

Note: You may also want to run

git clean -fd

as

git reset --hard

will not remove untracked files, where as git-clean will remove any files from the tracked root directory that are not under git tracking. WARNING - BE CAREFUL WITH THIS! It is helpful to run a dry-run with git-clean first, to see what it will delete.

This is also especially useful when you get the error message

~"performing this command will cause an un-tracked file to be overwritten"

Which can occur when doing several things, one being updating a working copy when you and your friend have both added a new file of the same name, but he's committed it into source control first, and you don't care about deleting your untracked copy.

In this situation, doing a dry run will also help show you a list of files that would be overwritten.

Re-clone

GIT=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)cd $GIT/..rm -rf $GITgit clone ...

• ✅ Deletes local, non-pushed commits
• ✅ Reverts changes you made to tracked files
• ✅ Restores tracked files you deleted
• ✅ Deletes files/dirs listed in .gitignore (like build files)
• ✅ Deletes files/dirs that are not tracked and not in .gitignore
• 😀 You won't forget this approach
• 😔 Wastes bandwidth

Following are other commands I forget daily.

Clean and reset

git clean --force -d -xgit reset --hard

• ❌ Deletes local, non-pushed commits
• ✅ Reverts changes you made to tracked files
• ✅ Restores tracked files you deleted
• ✅ Deletes files/dirs listed in .gitignore (like build files)
• ✅ Deletes files/dirs that are not tracked and not in .gitignore

Clean

git clean --force -d -x

• ❌ Deletes local, non-pushed commits
• ❌ Reverts changes you made to tracked files
• ❌ Restores tracked files you deleted
• ✅ Deletes files/dirs listed in .gitignore (like build files)
• ✅ Deletes files/dirs that are not tracked and not in .gitignore

Reset

git reset --hard

• ❌ Deletes local, non-pushed commits
• ✅ Reverts changes you made to tracked files
• ✅ Restores tracked files you deleted
• ❌ Deletes files/dirs listed in .gitignore (like build files)
• ❌ Deletes files/dirs that are not tracked and not in .gitignore

Notes

Test case for confirming all the above (use bash or sh):

mkdir projectcd projectgit initecho '*.built' > .gitignoreecho 'CODE' > a.sourceCodemkdir becho 'CODE' > b/b.sourceCodecp -r b cgit add .git commit -m 'Initial checkin'echo 'NEW FEATURE' >> a.sourceCodecp a.sourceCode a.builtrm -rf cecho 'CODE' > 'd.sourceCode'

See also

• git revert to make new commits that undo prior commits
• git checkout to go back in time to prior commits (may require running above commands first)
• git stash same as git reset above, but you can undo it