# Reset specific file to its state on a commit or branch with git

> How to restore a file to a specific state with git.

Source: https://curiouslychase.com/engineering/reset-specific-file-to-its-state-on-a-commit-or-branch-with-git/

If you are working on a file that's version controlled with [git](https://curiouslychase.com/engineering/git/) and you realize, "whoops! I want to reset that file back to the way it was in a specific commit" or "I want to reset that file back to its state in my mainline branch", the command you want to use is `checkout`.

Let's say I want to reset a file named `some/changed/file.ts` back to the state it was in on my `main` branch, I would run:

```shell
 git checkout origin/main some/changed/file.ts 
```

This would restore the file back to the state it was originally in. If you've committed changes to it, you'll see that your `git status` shows that the file has changed by adding anything back and removing anything that was added.