Handling Case-Sensitive File Renames in Git

The Problem

Today I ran into a frustrating Git issue that I’d never encountered before. I had renamed several image files in my Obsidian vault’s _attachments folder, changing their extensions from uppercase (.PNG, .JPG, .WEBP) to lowercase (.png, .jpg, .webp).

However, when I tried the usual workflow:

git add .
git commit -m "Fix file extensions"
git push

Git didn’t detect any changes, even though I could clearly see the files had different extensions on my filesystem.

The Root Cause

The issue stems from macOS having a case-insensitive filesystem while Git is case-sensitive.

From the filesystem’s point of view, image.PNG and image.png are the same file, but Git sees them as different files.

This caused a mismatch where Git was still tracking the old uppercase extensions in its index, even though the filesystem only showed the lowercase files.

As a result, Git doesn’t realize the file has been renamed because the filesystem treats both names as identical.

The Solution: git mv

The solution is to use git mv to explicitly tell Git about the change. The git mv command renames the file both in your filesystem and Git’s index, so Git can track the rename as a single operation:

# Instead of manually renaming files, use git mv
git mv oldfile.PNG newfile.png
git mv image.JPG image.jpg
git mv photo.WEBP photo.webp

What I Did

I had to rename several files that Git was tracking with uppercase extensions:

cd "/path/to/my/repo"

# First, find out which files with uppercase extensions Git is tracking
git ls-files _attachments/ | grep -E "\.(PNG|JPG|WEBP)$"

# Then rename each one using git mv
git mv _attachments/2b3a6c702b5b01cf12507cc029630bf3.JPG _attachments/2b3a6c702b5b01cf12507cc029630bf3.jpg
git mv _attachments/316d587a5c95f54ea7a4f86fbb986d63.PNG _attachments/316d587a5c95f54ea7a4f86fbb986d63.png
git mv _attachments/33fabea8972383bcb4bbeea50437f690.PNG _attachments/33fabea8972383bcb4bbeea50437f690.png
# more attachments...

# Commit the changes
git commit -m "Rename image file extensions from uppercase to lowercase"
git push

Alternative Solutions

Other approaches I could have used (but git mv is cleanest and simplest):

1. Configure Git to ignore case (not recommended):

   git config core.ignorecase false

2. Remove and re-add (loses history):

   git rm file.PNG
   git add file.png

   In contrast, when you use git mv, Git properly records the change as a rename:

   # Git status showed:
   renamed: _attachments/image.PNG -> _attachments/image.png