
Recent events have brought to light the negative connotations of having the main branch on a repository called `master`. Whether you want to change your primary branch name for this reason or just for fun, it is important to know how to do so and there are a few key steps to ensure that the change goes smoothly.

## Changing Future Repositories

Before we jump into changing our existing repos, let's make sure that we avoid the issue altogether in our future projects. In GitHub, under `Settings > Repositories` there is an option to name your default branch for future projects. Remember, this changes it for your personal account, but you can do the same for an organization.

As a note, on October 1st of this year, GitHub will be setting the default branch for new repositories to `main`.

## Updating Existing Repos

Now, to change an existing repo to a new name add a new branch from the existing `master`, which we will call `main` for this example. With an exact copy now on `main` go to the repository `Settings > Branches` and change the default branch to `main`. Then we can delete the `master` branch, which will alert us that the open pull requests for `master` will be affected. You can use a tool, like [this one from Edward Thomson](https://github.com/ethomson/retarget_prs), to re-target the pull requests to the new branch.

And that's it! You've made the change away from the `master` branch. If you still think it sounds a bit too complicated or too much work, GitHub announced that it will be releasing a feature to make a seamless transition when renaming the default branch by the end of the year.

## Credit

Today's Tuesday Tips was adapted from [a post on the DEV Community](https://dev.to/tracycss/renaming-your-master-branch-to-main-in-github-24cm).


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