Overriding Git's Tab-Completion in Bash

Tue, 19 May 2026 17:27:02 +0000

Only suggest local branches for tab-completion

If you use git from the command line like I do, then you probably already know that you can define aliases in ~/.gitconfig like this:

[alias]
	co = checkout

Or you can create the alias using the command line and make git itself write in ~/.gitconfig:

$ git config --global alias.co "checkout"

With this alias you can type “git co” instead of “git checkout”, and tab-completion works with the alias as well.