Hey there, let's work through why you can't switch to your dev and newLocal branches—this is a common hiccup when remote and local branch tracking gets out of sync. Here's a step-by-step fix:

1. First, verify which branches exist on your remote repository #

Sometimes git branch -a doesn't show all remote branches even after fetching, so let's check directly what's hosted on the remote:

git ls-remote --heads origin

This will list every branch on your remote (you'll see entries like refs/heads/dev or refs/heads/newLocal if they exist). If these branches aren't here, that means they've been deleted from the remote—you'll need to check with your team or restore them from a local backup if you have one.

2. Create local branches to track existing remote branches #

If the remote does have dev or newLocal, you just need to create a local branch that links to the remote version.

For the dev branch:

# Use this if you have Git 2.23+ (more user-friendly)
git switch -c dev origin/dev

# Or the classic checkout command for older Git versions
git checkout -b dev origin/dev

For the newLocal branch:

git switch -c newLocal origin/newLocal
# Or
git checkout -b newLocal origin/newLocal

After running this, git branch -a should display your new local branches alongside the remote ones, and you'll be able to switch between them normally.

3. Fix unresponsive git fetch #

If git fetch wasn't pulling in remote branch updates, try fetching all remote data explicitly:

git fetch --all

This syncs your local repo with all changes from the remote. Then, clean up any stale references to branches that no longer exist on the remote:

git remote prune origin

This removes outdated entries from your git branch -a list, so you only see active branches.

4. Confirm you're connected to the right remote #

It's easy to accidentally connect to the wrong repository. Double-check your remote URL with:

git remote -v

Make sure the listed URLs match your actual project repo. If not, update it with:

git remote set-url origin <your-correct-repo-url>

Then run git fetch --all again to sync everything properly.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Erez Priel