Git 2.23 came up with the new ‘ git switch ’ command, which is not a new feature but an additional command to ‘switch/change branch’ feature which is already available in the overloaded git checkout command.
Currently, the all-encompassing command – git checkout does many things. It can be used to switch branches and also to restore the working tree files.
To separate out the functionalities, the GIT community introduced the new git switch branch command which is an attempt to start to scale back to the responsibilities without breaking backward compatibility.
SYNOPSIS
git switch [<options>] [--no-guess] <branch> git switch [<options>] --detach [<start-point>] git switch [<options>] (-c|-C) <new-branch> [<start-point>] git switch [<options>] --orphan <new-branch>
DESCRIPTION
Switch to a specified branch. The working tree and the index are updated to match the branch. All new commits will be added to the tip of this branch.
Optionally a new branch could be created with either -c, -C, automatically from a remote branch of same name (see --guess), or detach the working tree from any branch with --detach, along with switching.
Switching branches does not require a clean index and working tree (i.e. no differences compared to HEAD). The operation is aborted however if the operation leads to loss of local changes, unless told otherwise with --discard-changes or --merge.
THIS COMMAND IS EXPERIMENTAL. THE BEHAVIOR MAY CHANGE.