How to Checkout a Remote Git Branch

1. Checkout a Remote Git Branch With One Remote
2. Checkout a Remote Git Branch With Multiple Remotes

This article outlines the steps necessary to checkout a remote Git branch that does not exist in the local repository.

When collaborating as a team on a project, a developer may create a new branch and push it to the remote repository. Other developers will have to download the branch from the remote for it to be accessible locally.

So, how do you checkout such a branch?

Checkout a Remote Git Branch With One Remote

Assuming we are collaborating on a project as a team and one developer creates a test branch and pushes it to the remote, how do we locally checkout the test branch?

First, we will need to fetch from the remote repository. We will run:

$ git fetch

This will bring down all changes from the remote repository to our local machine. We can see all the branches available for checkout with the git branch command, as illustrated below.

$ git branch -v -a

This will give you all the remote and local branches available in your repository. To start working on the Test branch, we will use the git checkout command, as illustrated below.

$ git checkout Test

By default, Git will switch to the Test branch and set it up to track the Test branch from our remote.

Checkout a Remote Git Branch With Multiple Remotes

Again, we will start by fetching from the remote. However, this time, we will specify a remote.

$ git fetch origin

We will then use the git checkout command to create a local branch based on the remote branch.

$ git checkout Test

To checkout a remote branch that does not exist in your local repository, you will need to fetch from the remote first.