Fix 'fatal: not a git repository'

Does this match your situation?

• 'fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git'
• Every Git command fails the same way, including git status.
• It worked yesterday in the same terminal.
• You just downloaded a project as a ZIP rather than cloning it.

Step-by-step fix

1. Check where you actually are

   Git walks up from the current directory looking for .git and gives up at the filesystem root. The overwhelmingly common cause is being one level above or below the project — a terminal tab left in your home directory, or a folder that contains the project rather than being it.

   step 1Copy

   pwd
   ls -a
   ls */.git 2>/dev/null      # is the repository one level down?
   

   Show the Windows / PowerShell version

   Windows / PowerShellCopy

   Get-Location
   Get-ChildItem -Force
   Get-ChildItem -Directory | Where-Object { Test-Path "$($_.FullName)\.git" }
   

2. Ask Git where it thinks the repository is

   rev-parse is the definitive answer. If it prints a path, you are inside a repository and the error came from something else — a different terminal, a script that changed directory, or a tool running elsewhere.

   step 2Copy

   git rev-parse --show-toplevel
   git rev-parse --git-dir
   

3. If it never was a repository, initialise one

   A folder downloaded as a ZIP from GitHub has no history at all — the .git directory is not included in the archive. Initialising creates a fresh repository with no connection to the original, which is fine for your own project but means you have no upstream history.

   step 3Copy

   git init
   git add .
   git commit -m "Initial commit"
   git remote add origin <url>
   

   ⚠️If you wanted the project's history, delete the folder and git clone <url> instead. A ZIP download can never be turned back into a repository with history.

4. If .git disappeared, look before you re-init

   Running git init in a folder whose .git was deleted does not restore anything — it starts an empty history and makes recovery harder by making everything look normal. Check the recycle bin, your backups and any sibling copy of the folder first.

   step 4Copy

   ls -a ..                  # a .git in the parent?
   find . -maxdepth 3 -name .git -type d
   

5. Check for the environment variables that override everything

   GIT_DIR and GIT_WORK_TREE force Git to look somewhere specific and produce this exact error when they point at a stale path. They are usually left behind by a script or a dotfile.

   step 5Copy

   echo "$GIT_DIR $GIT_WORK_TREE"
   unset GIT_DIR GIT_WORK_TREE
   

Why this works

Git has no daemon and no registry of your projects. Every command starts by looking for a .git directory in the working directory, then in its parent, and so on up to the root of the filesystem — and if it reaches the top without finding one, it has nowhere to read objects or refs from and stops. That is the whole of this error. It says nothing about the repository being damaged, because from Git's point of view there is no repository here at all; the .git directory is the repository, and everything else in the folder is just files.

If that didn’t work

• In a submodule, .git is a file containing 'gitdir: ...' rather than a directory — check the path it names still exists.
• On a network drive or inside a container, confirm the mount is actually present before blaming Git.
• If .git exists but Git still refuses, see the dubious-ownership guide — that error is sometimes reported similarly by IDEs.
• A .git folder that exists but is empty means an interrupted clone: delete it and clone again.

How to stop it happening again

• Clone repositories rather than downloading ZIPs when you want history.
• Add the current branch to your shell prompt — the absence of one tells you immediately you are outside a repository.
• Use git rev-parse --show-toplevel at the top of scripts rather than assuming a relative path.
• Never delete .git to 'clean up' a folder; it is the entire project history.

Commands used in this guide

Frequently asked questions