How can I change which commit master points to in git?

In git, I've been making commits onto the master branch, when really I should have been working on a feature branch. I want to change this so that master is back to where it started, and what was on master is now on a new branch. Basically, my commit history looks like this:

A -- B -- C -- D -- E
          |         |
          |       master
     origin/master

And I want it to look like this:

        master
          |
A -- B -- C -- D -- E
          |         |
          |       new_branch
     origin/master

How can I change where master points?

1. Stash your uncommitted changes: git stash
2. Create a new branch: git branch new_branch
3. Reset master to origin/master: git reset --hard origin/master
4. Check out the new branch again: git checkout new_branch
5. Unstash your changes: git stash pop

Stash/unstash is not necessary if your working tree is clean. Just make sure there are no changes in your working tree, because those will be removed when you reset --hard

---

Another possibility (faster, and without the need to stash and reset):

1. Check out a new branch: git checkout -b new_branch master
2. Create a 'new' master branch and point it to origin/master's commit: git branch -f master origin/master

$ git checkout master
$ git reset --hard <commit-id-for-master-to-sit-at>

for example try this

$ mkdir example; cd example
$ git init
$ vi testFile.txt
(now add "test commit 1" to line 1 of file)
$ git add *
$ git commit
(add message "(+) 1st commit" to git commit)
$ vi testFile.txt
(now add "test commit 2" to line 1 of file)
$ git add *
$ git commit
(add message "(+) 2nd commit" to git commit)
$ vi testFile.txt
(now add "test commit 3" to line 1 of file)
$ git add *
$ git commit
(add message "(+) 3rd commit" to git commit)
$ git tag final_head
$ git reset --hard HEAD~1

this example shows moving the master to a different commit. Note here that the tag allows us to save the old master, in case :)

Checkout a new branch where branch main is, then delete branch main, then create branch main anew where main was intended to be (e.g., at origin/main):

git checkout -b new_branch_where_main_was
git branch -d main
git branch main origin/main

Note that this does not change anything in the working directory: HEAD remains unchanged, uncommitted changes remain where they are. No stashing needed, no checkouts needed, no resets needed.

Go to .git/refs/heads/master which has the hash of master and change that to whatever you want. I use gitg to quickly find the hash of master and afterwards to verify that the move was successful.

Create a new branch new_branch at the current HEAD (assuming HEAD = master), reset master to C and switch to new_branch again (speaking in terms of SmartGit).

Note that at any given time you can change where a branch points to by using git update-ref refs/heads/branch id , but before you do this, you must give a name to the tip of the tree, otherwise your work will unaccessible. So these two commands may do the job

 git update-ref refs/heads/newfeature HEAD
 git update-ref refs/heads/master XXYYY

But make sure that you do not have any uncommited changes otherwise all hell will break loose