I Accidentally Deleted a Folder in Github and Can’t Recreate It

Unlike your local operating system, Github deletes empty folders.

Any time that a folder is empty, Github will automatically prune it. In order to create a new folder, there must be a file in it.

There are two ways to create a new folder in Github:

First Way

  • Create a new folder with your desired name on your local machine
  • Go to Github and navigate to the folder one level above where you want this folder to be located
  • Click on the menu in the top right, and choose “Upload files”
  • Drag and drop the folder from your local machine into the upload field
    • Be sure to commit changes
    • This will upload the entire folder and its contents to your Github repository

Second Way

  • Go to the folder in which you want to create a subfolder
  • Create a new file
  • In the file name field, type the name that you want your new folder to have, followed by a forward slash /
    • e.g. newFolder/
  • Then, create a placeholder file in order to prevent the folder from being empty
    • e.g. placeholder.md
    • Be sure to commit changes
  • Now, you can populate the folder with the files that you intend
  • Only after you have put your own files in can you delete the placeholder file