How to drop stash in Git
Łukasz Holeczek
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Dropping stash in Git permanently removes stashed changes from the stash list when they are no longer needed or relevant.
As the creator of CoreUI with over 25 years of experience managing complex development workflows, I’ve used stash drop extensively for maintaining clean stash lists and preventing confusion from outdated changes.
From my expertise, the most straightforward approach is using git stash drop to remove specific stashes by their index reference.
This command provides essential stash list maintenance for keeping development workflows organized and efficient.
Use git stash drop with stash reference to permanently remove specific stashed changes from the stash list.
git stash drop stash@{0}
Here git stash drop stash@{0} permanently removes the most recent stash from the stash list. The stash@{0} syntax refers to the stash by its index position, where 0 is the most recent. You can drop any stash by changing the index number, like stash@{2} for the third most recent stash. Use git stash list to see all stashes and their indices before dropping. Once dropped, the stashed changes are permanently lost and cannot be recovered.
Best Practice Note:
This is the same approach we use in CoreUI development for maintaining clean stash lists and preventing confusion from outdated experimental changes.
Always double-check the stash contents with git stash show before dropping, and consider creating a backup branch if the stashed changes might be valuable later.
