Note, the solution uses git stash pop, rather than git stash apply. Therefore, if you want to move your changes to an alternative branch that already exists, all you need to do is run: If you haven’t already committed your changes, just use git checkout to move to the new branch and then commit them normally - changes to files are not tied to a particular branch until you commit them. Multiple questions have been raised on Stack Overflow relating to this (examples can be found here, here and here) Visual Studio will detect the changes (including if the checked out branch is changed), and may ask you to reload your solution. If you experience this issue, I’d advise bypassing Visual Studio and executing git commands directly from the command line. Note: The reason I was looking for a solution is because Visual Studio can be a bit funny about allowing you to switch branches if there are outstanding changes often instructing users to either commit or revert their changes before switching. How do you move those changes to the correct branch? A common scenario: you’ve been working away on some code changes, but then realise that you have the wrong branch checked out! Or, perhaps the code changes have reached such a scope that they really deserve to be in their own branch.

Visual studio git stash