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Git & Command Line Tutorial · Branching and Collaboration · Lesson 18 of 20

Stashing Work in Progress

Put unfinished changes aside with git stash to switch branches or pull, then bring them back with stash pop.

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When to stash

You're halfway through a change and need to switch branches to fix an urgent bug, but you're not ready to commit. Stash saves your uncommitted changes and gives you a clean working directory:

Command Does
git stash push -m "wip: header" Save changes with a description (-u includes untracked files)
git stash list Show saved stashes
git stash pop Re-apply the latest stash and remove it
git stash apply stash@{1} Re-apply a specific stash and keep it
git stash drop Delete a stash

Stashes are local and easy to forget. For anything longer than a quick interruption, a work-in-progress commit on a branch is safer.

stash, fix something else, then pop
git init -b main --quiet site && cd site
printf "<h1>Shop</h1>\n<p>Welcome!</p>\n<main>products</main>\n<p>Contact us</p>\n<footer>(c) Shop</footer>\n" > index.html
git add . && git commit -m "Add page" --quiet

sed -i 's#<footer>.*#<footer>(c) 2026 Shop, new footer in progress</footer>#' index.html
git stash push -m "wip: new footer" --quiet
echo "working tree clean? $(git status --short | wc -l | tr -d ' ') changed files"

git switch -c fix/title --quiet
sed -i '1s/Shop/Our Shop/' index.html && git commit -am "Fix title" --quiet   # line 1 only
git switch main --quiet && git merge fix/title --quiet

git stash list
git stash pop --quiet
cat index.html                         # the fixed title and the unfinished footer, together

Output

working tree clean? 0 changed files
stash@{0}: On main: wip: new footer
Auto-merging index.html
<h1>Our Shop</h1>
<p>Welcome!</p>
<main>products</main>
<p>Contact us</p>
<footer>(c) 2026 Shop, new footer in progress</footer>

Run this on your computer — see “Get Started” for setup.

Test yourself

What does git stash pop do?

  1. Deletes all stashes
  2. Re-applies the most recent stash and removes it from the stash list
  3. Pushes the stash to the remote
  4. Commits the stash
Show answer

Answer: Re-applies the most recent stash and removes it from the stash list

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