Git Fetch

git fetch downloads commits from a remote and updates your remote-tracking branches. It never touches your working directory and never merges anything, so it is always safe to run — which makes it the right default before you start work.

That safety is the point. git pull is fetch followed by a merge, so it can conflict; git fetch cannot. Teams that prefer to see other people's changes before absorbing them fetch, read the log, and merge on purpose.

Fetch changes

git fetch

This command fetches the changes from the remote repository to the local repository. It updates the remote tracking branches in the local repository. The changes are not merged with the local branches. To merge the changes, you can use the git merge command.

Where the changes land

Fetched commits go to origin/main, not to your main. You can see the gap without changing anything:

git fetch
git log main..origin/main        # what you are missing
git log origin/main..main        # what you have not pushed

Reading those two before you merge is how you find out that a colleague has been rewriting a shared branch, or that your last push never landed.

Fetching everything

git fetch --all --prune

--all covers every remote you have configured. --prune deletes remote-tracking branches whose remote branch has been deleted, so your list stays honest instead of accumulating references to branches that no longer exist.

Folding it in

git merge origin/main    # merge
git rebase origin/main   # or replay your commits on top

git pull does the fetch and the merge in one step. Choosing them separately costs one extra command and buys you the chance to look first.

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