How to replace local branch with remote branch entirely in Git?

  1. Make sure you've checked out the branch you're replacing (from Zoltán's comment).
  2. Assuming that master is the local branch you're replacing, and that "origin/master" is the remote branch you want to reset to:

    git reset --hard origin/master
    

This updates your local HEAD branch to be the same revision as origin/master, and --hard will sync this change into the index and workspace as well.


git branch -D <branch-name>
git fetch <remote> <branch-name>
git checkout -b <branch-name> --track <remote>/<branch-name>

I'm kind of surprised no one mentioned this yet; I use it nearly every day:

git reset --hard @{u}

Basically, @{u} is just shorthand for the upstream branch that your current branch is tracking. For example, this typically equates to origin/[my-current-branch-name]. It's nice because it's branch agnostic.

Make sure to git fetch first to get the latest copy of the remote branch.

Side Note: if you're using Git in PowerShell you'll need to escape the special characters first, though I've also confirmed it works as a string, so for example either of these will work:

git reset --hard `@`{u`}
# or
git reset --hard "@{u}"

That's as easy as three steps:

  1. Delete your local branch: git branch -d local_branch

  2. Fetch the latest remote branch: git fetch origin remote_branch

  3. Rebuild the local branch based on the remote one:

    git checkout -b local_branch origin/remote_branch

Tags:

Git