View

Basic

Show local branches.

$ git branch
  foo
* bar
  master

Get the current branch.

$ git branch --show-current
bar

Verbose

Show local branches with references to the remote.

$ git branch -v

  foo                                                    4c677a0 [gone] Some commit message
* bar                                                    a89446e Another message
  master                                                 5680e85 Yet another commit message

Remotes

Show only remote branches.

$ git branch -r

  origin/bar
  origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  origin/master

You can also run this with the verbose flag to which commit each points to.

$ git branch -r -v
  origin/bar                                 a89446e Another message
  origin/HEAD                                -> origin/master
  origin/master                              5680e85 Yet another commit message

All

View both local and remote branch references.

$ git branch -a

  foo
* bar
  master
  remotes/origin/bar
  remotes/origin/baz
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master

Delete local branches

Delete one branch

$ git branch -d BRANCH_NAME
# Delete even if not merged.
$ git branch -D BRANCH_NAME

Restore deleted branch

Even often a branch is deleted, you can still create it from the local remote reference.

$ git branch -d foo
$ git checkout foo
Branch 'foo' set up to track remote branch 'foo' from 'origin'.
Switched to a new branch 'foo'

From the git checkout manpage:

If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in exactly one remote (call it ) with a matching name, treat as equivalent to

$ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>

e.g.

$ git checkout -b foo --track origin/foo

Delete unneeded branches

Based on the ZSH alias gbda - probably “git branch delete all”.

Select all merged branches, excluding master and develop, then delete each.

$ git branch --no-color --merged | command grep -vE "^(\+|\*|\s*(master|develop)\s*$)" | command xargs -n 1 git branch -d

Note that a branch might be merged but might not known to git if it was a squash merge.

You can run git fetch first to make sure you are up to date with the remote.

Here is a more aggressive one (best to run this on master or develop and push your feature branches first, so you can recreate them from the remote references).

$ git checkout master
$ git branch --no-color | command grep -vE "^(\+|\*|\s*(master|develop)\s*$)" | command xargs -n 1 git branch -D
Deleted branch foo (was 06e07e7).
Deleted branch foo (was 125f0d2).

If you use -d you’ll get warnings on unmerged branches and -D will delete it anyway.

Here with -d:

error: The branch 'foo' is not fully merged.
If you are sure you want to delete it, run 'git branch -D foo'.

Perhaps this can be extended to exclude the current git branch.

Delete remote branches

Even though you’ve deleted a branch locally as covered above, your git repo will have a local reference to that remote branch. And also the branch might still exist on GH itself.

Delete many

Use this to remove local references to remote branches which have been deleted on GitHub.

$ git remote prune origin

Delete branch on remote

How to delete the actual branch on GitHub, using the command-line rather than clicking delete the Branches tab.

Do a push with a delete flag.

$ git push -d origin BRANCH_NAME

This works on branches and tags.

This has no effect on the local branch or tag.

Set upstream

This is needed the first time pushing an new branch created locally.

$ git checkout -b my-feature

Use the --set-upstream flag when pushing.

$ git push -u origin my-feature
$ # Or
$ git push -u origin $(git branch --show-current)

Or configure the branch then push.

$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/my-feature my-feature
$ git push

There is a way to configure git to always set the upstream for you. But I think it is better to have more control, such as to avoid recreating a branch you deleted. You’ll get an error when pushing and can stop and think if you are on the right branch.