How to create a private fork of a public repo on GitHub?

1. Clone the public bare repo locally:

git clone --bare git@github.com:Username/cool-public-repo.git
cd cool-public-repo.git

2. Push newly cloned public repo to your own Private GitHub repo:

git push --mirror git@github.com:saadjs/private-repo.git

3. Delete the old clone

cd ..
rm -rf cool-public-repo.git

4. Clone the private repo to work on locally:

git clone git@github.com:saadjs/private-repo.git && cd $_

Optional:

• To pull new changes made to the original public repo:

  git remote add public git@github.com:Username/cool-public-repo.git
  

  Create a new branch to pull the changes

  git checkout -b new-changes-from-public
  git pull public main
  git push --set-upstream origin new-changes-from-public
  # or merge into to main & push to origin main