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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T12:42:13+00:00

I need to delete a master branch, but it’s proving to be hard. I

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I need to delete a master branch, but it’s proving to be hard. I just want to clean that branch out and start new. I am deleting from the dev branch. I want master on GitHub to be clean.

 # git push origin --delete master

> To https://github.com/mymasterb.git  ! [remote rejected] master
> (deletion of the current branch prohibited) error: failed to push some
> refs to 'https://github.com/mymaster.git'

How do I quite simply start my master with a fresh slate?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As explained in “Deleting your master branch” by Matthew Brett, you need to change your GitHub repo default branch.

    You need to go to the GitHub page for your forked repository, and click on the “Settings” button.

    Click on the “Branches” tab on the left hand side. There’s a “Default branch” dropdown list near the top of the screen.

    From there, select placeholder (where placeholder is the dummy name for your new default branch).

    Confirm that you want to change your default branch.

    Now you can do (from the command line):

    git push origin :master

    Or, since 2012, you can delete that same branch directly on GitHub:

    GitHub deletion

    That was announced in Sept. 2013, a year after I initially wrote that answer.

    For small changes like documentation fixes, typos, or if you’re just a walking software compiler, you can get a lot done in your browser without needing to clone the entire repository to your computer.

    Note: for BitBucket, Tum reports in the comments:

    About the same for Bitbucket

    Repo -> Settings -> Repository details -> Main branch
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