Programming guide

Resolve a Git merge conflict safely

Understand why a merge conflict happened, choose the right combination of changes and finish the merge without losing anyone's work.

Estimated time: 15–40 minutesUpdated: 28 September 2026

Use this guide when Git stops a merge, pull or rebase with a conflict message. Have your terminal or editor open in the project and, if possible, know who made the other changes.

Step by step

  1. Stay calm and check the status

    Run git status to see which files have conflicts; they are listed as both modified. Nothing has been lost at this point. If you want to start again, git merge --abort or git rebase --abort returns you to where you were.

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