Renaming a branch

A branch name is a label on a commit, so renaming one costs nothing: no commit is rewritten, nothing is recreated, and the work stays exactly where it was. Right-click a branch — in the graph or in the sidebar — and Rename opens a dialog with the current name already in it.

What moves is your local branch. A branch you have already pushed keeps its old name on the remote until you push the new one and delete the old one there; renaming here never reaches out to a server.

Renaming a branch updates it on disk

The dialog arrives pre-filled with the current name; type the new one and confirm, and the branch has moved by the time it closes — its commits, and the remote it tracks, follow it. The one branch that refuses is a protected one (main, by default): the dialog tells you so inline instead of letting the rename land.

Captured from the running app by this scenario.

Do this

1. Select the HEAD commit in the graph
2. Open the rename dialog for the branch feature/login
3. Set the rename branch name to feature/authentication
4. Confirm the branch rename

You should see

• The rename branch dialog is shown
• The branch feature/authentication exists
• The branch feature/login no longer exists
• No error notification is displayed

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This page is generated from apps/e2e/features/branch-rename.feature, the end-to-end test that drives the feature it describes.