All of my public repositories now use a "main" branch instead of "master". ("master" still exists and will be bumped along with "main" for a while, so I won't break existing repo clones of you guys. I'll put up blog posts before that happens.) If you have cloned a repo of mine and want to switch to the new branch, either clone the repo afresh or run the following steps: $ git checkout master $ git branch -m main $ git fetch $ git branch -u origin/main $ git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/main An overview on why this is happening: Summary: "master" in Git does not refer to a "master/slave model"; something like that simply does not exist in Git. It didn't even inherit a "master/slave" connotation from Bitkeeper. It was always meant as "the main thing" or "the original thing", as in "master recording". Still, it is a bad choice of words. When we're talking about Git, we're talking about a decentralized version control system -- something that very well could employ a "master/slave model". Git's "master" is very misleading in that regard. Plus, it's not a great name anyway. It's not like the term "master" is a precise description of what this branch is used for. From where I'm standing, the "master" branch always was "the main branch of development", so "main" is indeed a much better name for it. In upstream Git, preparations are being made to change the default branch name for new repositories from "master" to "main": So you better get used to it anyway. (And it really isn't a big deal. Stop the drama. "main" is a good name, let's use it.)