Can git undo a checkout of unstaged files

I accidentially discard my changes on files in my local working tree via git checkout. The files aren't staged at this time. Is it posible to "undo" this checkout?

Solution 1:

If you are using a "professional" IDE chances are good that you can restore files from a local History. In Rubymine for example you can right click files and watch a history of changes independent from the git changes, saved me a few times now ^^

Solution 2:

I believe if a file is modified but not yet added (staged), it is purely "private".
Meaning it cannot be restored by GIT if overwritten with the index or the HEAD version (unless you have a copy of your current work somewhere).

A "private" content is one only visible in your current directory, but not registered in any way in Git.

Note: As explained in other answers, you can recover your changes if you use an IDE (with local history) or have an open editor (ctrl+Z).

Solution 3:

If you are working in an editor like Sublime Text, and have file in question still open, you can press ctrl+z, and it will return to the state it had before git checkout.

Solution 4:

Unfortunately your changes are lost. Your private modifications are simply overwritten. Unless you did git stash prior making checkout...

Take it from the brighter side: you can now implement things even better ;)

Solution 5:

Developing on OS X? Using Xcode? You're likely to be in luck!

As described in a comment by qungu, OS X maintains an autosaved version history of files, even if you're not using time machine.

So, if you've blown away your unstaged local changes with a careless git checkout ., here's how you can probably recover all your work.

If somebody finds this thread having destroyed some work in XCode, there is a way to get the AutoSave history. XCode itself does not have a menu entry to see the AutoSave history, but it does store it. If you open the files in question in TextEdit, you can revert and look through the AutoSave history under File > Revert.

Which is awesome, and recovered about a day of work for me, yesterday.

You might ask, "Why doesn't the git command-line UI, the premier VCS used for software engineering in 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020, at least back up files before just blowing them away? Like, you know, well written software tools for about the last three decades."

Or perhaps you ask, "Why is this insanely awesome file history feature accessible in TextEdit but not Xcode where I actually need it?"

… and both of those, I think, will tell you quite a lot about our industry. Or maybe you'll go and fix those tools. Which would be super.