title: Untracked files between branches in Git
body: <p>I've been searching around here for to look for an answer and it seems I may just be making incorrect assumptions on how git branches are supposed to work.</p>
  
  <p>I have my <code>master</code> branch and I've created a feature branch called <code>profiles</code> where I'm doing some specific work to profiles. While working on profiles I've changed 5 or 6 files and added another 5 or 6 new files. I needed to switch back to the <code>master</code> branch to fix a quick bug and noticed all the new files and modified files where in there as well. I guess this makes sense since git isnt going to remove untracked files from the <code>master</code> branch and bring them back for my <code>profiles</code> branch since they are, in fact, untracked. But what about the changes to existing files. Why are they showing up in the master branch.</p>
  
  <p>Whats the best practice here. I'm not ready to commit the changes locally yet. Should I just be stashing all these changes, switch to <code>master</code>, make the small fix, switch back to <code>profiles</code> then reapply the stash?</p>
  
  <p>Any help is appreciated. Thanks</p>