Detached HEAD in Git: What It Means and How to Recover
In Git, a detached HEAD state means that HEAD is pointing to a specific commit instead of a branch. This usually happens when you check out a commit hash or a tag directly, rather than switching to a named branch like main or dev.
While in this mode, you can still make changes and commit, but those commits won’t belong to any branch. If you move away without saving them, they’ll be hard to find—or lost entirely.
To fix this, create a new branch from your current state using git checkout -b save-my-work. This preserves your changes and ties them to a branch so you can continue working safely. Detached HEAD is great for temporary exploration, but always branch off if you plan to make changes you want to keep.