git detached HEAD — what it means and how to fix

Quick Answer

# Save your work to a new branch (recommended)
git checkout -b my-fix

# Or discard nothing and go back to main
git checkout main

When this happens

HEAD detached at abc1234

You checked out a specific commit, tag, or remote branch directly. Any commits made now will not belong to a branch and can be lost.

Other causes & fixes

Find the commit hash with git log --oneline, then attach it to a new branch.

git log --oneline -5         # note the hash of your last commit
git checkout -b recovery-branch abc1234

Use a worktree to check out an old commit without detaching HEAD in your main working directory.

git worktree add ../inspect abc1234
cd ../inspect
# ... look around ...
git worktree remove ../inspect