How to Unfork a GitHub Repository Without Deleting History

Background: Developers often fork a repository and later make extensive changes, but GitHub does not provide an “Unfork/Detach” feature, leading to issues such as accidental pull requests to the upstream, loss of contributor visibility, and difficulty separating the fork while preserving issues, wikis, and pull‑request history.

Solution: The most reliable method is to contact GitHub Support via the unfork request form ( https://support.github.com/contact?tags=rr-forks ), select the appropriate account or organization, enter “unfork” in the subject to trigger the virtual assistant, answer the assistant’s questions, and submit the request. If the repository has child forks, choose “Bring the child forks with the repository” to retain their fork records.

Alternative method: To keep the Git commit history, you can clone the repository bare and push it as a mirror:

git clone --bare

git push --mirror

This preserves the full commit history but cannot retain Issues, Wikis, or Pull Requests.

Hope this information helps those needing to detach a forked repository.

References:

Delete fork dependency of a GitHub repository – Stack Overflow

Unfork a Github fork without deleting – Stack Overflow