Fix 'no upstream branch' and 'no tracking information'

Does this match your situation?

• 'fatal: The current branch feature/login has no upstream branch.'
• 'There is no tracking information for the current branch.' when running git pull.
• git status never says ahead or behind.
• The branch exists on GitHub but your local copy still will not pull.

Step-by-step fix

1. Push and set the upstream together

   This is the answer for a branch you created locally. -u (short for --set-upstream) creates the branch on the remote and writes the tracking relationship into .git/config, so every later push and pull works with no arguments.

   step 1Copy

   git push -u origin feature/login
   
   # whatever branch you are on:
   git push -u origin HEAD
   

2. Link to a branch that already exists remotely

   When the branch is already on the server — someone else created it, or you deleted and recreated your local copy — you want the link without pushing anything.

   step 2Copy

   git fetch origin
   git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/feature/login feature/login
   git status
   

3. See what is currently tracking what

   -vv shows every local branch with its upstream and how far ahead or behind it is. A branch with no upstream simply has nothing in that column, which makes the gap obvious at a glance.

   step 3Copy

   git branch -vv
   git config --get-regexp '^branch\.'
   

4. Make Git set it up automatically from now on

   Since Git 2.37 push.autoSetupRemote does exactly what -u does, on every first push of a new branch, without you remembering. It is the single best cure for this error.

   step 4Copy

   git config --global push.autoSetupRemote true
   git --version        # needs 2.37 or newer
   

5. Repoint a branch that tracks the wrong thing

   Common after renaming a branch, or when a fork tracks upstream instead of your own origin. The unset leaves the branch with no upstream at all, which is sometimes what you want.

   step 5Copy

   git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main main
   git branch --unset-upstream
   

Why this works

Local branches and remote branches are separate things that happen to share a name. Tracking is the deliberate link between them, stored as branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge in .git/config, and it is what lets a bare git push or git pull work out a destination on its own. Clone creates that link for the default branch and git switch creates it for a branch that already exists on the server — but a branch you invent locally has no counterpart anywhere, so Git refuses to guess. It could assume origin and the same name, and quite often be right; instead it stops and prints the exact command, because silently creating a branch on a shared server is a worse failure mode than one extra flag.

If that didn’t work

• Check the remote is named what you think: git remote -v.
• In a fork, the branch may exist on upstream but not on origin — push it to origin first.
• If git fetch shows nothing, the remote branch may have been deleted; prune with git fetch -p.
• 'no tracking information' on pull can also mean the upstream branch was renamed on the host.

How to stop it happening again

• Turn on push.autoSetupRemote and never think about this again.
• Use git push -u the first time you push any new branch.
• Run git branch -vv occasionally to spot branches with no upstream before they surprise you.
• Create branches with git switch -c <name> origin/<base> so the base is unambiguous.

Commands used in this guide

Frequently asked questions