Move Git LFS tracked files under regular Git

Issue 641 mentions the same issue.

I tried to stop using Git LFS, but found no way to revert my previous tracked pointer files using git lfs uninit, git lfs untrack, git rm... after I move those files back it still lists as tracked by Git LFS with git lfs ls-files, how can I opt out the whole Git LFS stuff from my repo?

The answer was:

  1. Remove all filter.lfs.* git config entries with git lfs uninit.
  2. Clear any any attributes that use the lfs filter in .gitattributes by running git lfs untrack for each file type, or deleting .gitattributes if LFS is all you ever used it for.

After this, any added files will go straight to git.

But this was not so simple:

I later end up LFS pointer files in my working directory and have to recover all my pictures from .git/lfs using the sha1 hash stored in those pointers manually.

Update March 2016, the issue 957 illustrates a possible solution by tstephens619:

I made the same mistake of including several small graphics formats into my git lfs tracking list.
I was able to move this files back into git by doing the following:

  • Create a list of all of the files currently being tracked by git-lfs, filter out *.gz and *.rpm (I want to still track those extensions with git-lfs)

    git lfs ls-files | grep -vE "\.gz|\.rpm$" | cut -d ' ' -f 3 > ~/temp/lfs-files.txt

  • Stop tracking the small graphics files

    git lfs untrack "*.tts"
git lfs untrack "*.bfx"
git lfs untrack "*.ttf"
git lfs untrack "*.xcf"
git lfs untrack "*.pkm"
git lfs untrack "*.png"

  • Temporarily uninit git-lfs

    git lfs uninit
# Git LFS 2.x+
git lfs uninstall

  • Use the file list to touch each file:

    cat ~/temp/lfs-files.txt | xargs touch

git status will now show each file as modified

  • Add the changes to git index (I did this via git gui)

  • commit the changes and then re-init git-lfs

    git commit
git lfs init

The maintainer ttaylorr adds:

One way to do this would be:

for file in $FILES_TO_REVERT; do
  git lfs untrack "$file";
  git rm --cached "$file";
  git add --force "$file";
done

git commit -m "..."

My preference would be not to add a command to Git LFS to the above effect, since it is possible in a number of different way with the porcelain commands provided by Git and Git LFS


I have just recently run into this problem where assets were accidentally added to git-lfs on one branch that shouldn't have been. My solution was:

git lfs untrack '<file-type>'
git rm --cached '<file-type>'
git add '<file-type>'
git commit -m "restore '<file-type>' to git from lfs"

The result is a rewrite of the git-lfs oid sha256 pointers with the standard file contents.

(Edit 2019-03): The accepted answer was changed to provide an easy solution for simpler cases. See also the edits in the answer by VonC for alternate solutions in case you have a more complex case on hand.


As of Git 2.16 (released Jan 17th, 2018), you can do this easily with the --renormalize flag of git add:

git lfs untrack "<pattern>"
git add --renormalize .
git commit -m "Restore file contents that were previously in LFS"

From Git's documentation:

--renormalize: Apply the "clean" process freshly to all tracked files to forcibly add them again to the index. This is useful after changing core.autocrlf configuration or the text attribute in order to correct files added with wrong CRLF/LF line endings. This option implies -u.

The key part here is "all tracked files". Normally, filters are only run when a Git operation changes a file in the work tree. Changing the LFS whitelist in .gitattributes isn't a Git operation, and so the index ends up in an inconsistent state after you run git lfs untrack. Running git add --renormalize . tells Git to re-run filters on every file in the repository, which ensures that all files which should be in LFS are—and that all files which shouldn't be aren't.

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