How to Remove a Git Remote URL

1. Remove a Git Remote URL Using git remote rm
2. Remove a Git Remote URL Using git remote remove

Git remote is a hosted repository on a remote server shared by all team members to share their changes and work collaboratively. Generally, we have a single remote with different branches called origin. We can manually add other remotes to our local git repository using git remote add REMOTE-ID REMOTE-URL. The origin is set when we clone a git repository from the server. Sometimes we need to remove a remote URL from our local repository in cases like when the remote repository is moved to another host. We can remove a Git remote URL using git remote rm and git remote remove commands.

Remove a Git Remote URL Using git remote rm

We can use git remote -v to view all the remotes of our local repository.

For example, we have set two remotes, origin and upstream.

git remote -v

Output:

origin      git@gitlab.com:delftstack/programmingarticles.git (fetch)
origin      git@gitlab.com:delftstack/programmingarticles.git (push)
upstream    git@bitbucket.org:delftstack/test.git (fetch)
upstream    git@bitbucket.org:delftstack/test.git (push)

We use the command git remote rm followed by the remote name to remove a remote.

git remote rm upstream

It removes upstream from the git remote list.

Now, if we view the remote list, we will notice that the upstream is removed.

git remote -v

Output:

origin	git@gitlab.com:delftstack/programmingarticles.git (fetch)
origin	git@gitlab.com:delftstack/programmingarticles.git (push)

The git remote rm command removes the entries about the specified remote repository from the .git/config file.

We can also manually edit the .git/config file to remove the git remote; however, it is not good practice.

When we try to remove a remote that is not present, we get an error saying fatal: No such remote: '<remote-name>'.

git remote rm DelftStack

Output:

fatal: No such remote: DelftStack

In the example repo, there is only one remote named origin. When we run git remote rm DelftStack, we get an error because no DelftStack remote is present.

Remove a Git Remote URL Using git remote remove

It is similar to the git remote rm command and also works in a similar way.

We use the command git remote remove followed by the remote name to remove a remote.

git remote remove upstream

This removes upstream from the git remote list.