List Branches

Listing branches tells you what exists locally and, with the right flags, what exists on the remote. It is read-only, and the marker next to each name is the part worth learning to read.

List branches

git branch

or

git branch --list

This command lists all the branches in the current repository. It shows the current branch you're on and highlights it with an asterisk.

Reading the markers

An asterisk marks the branch you are on. Anything you have not merged yet is prefixed with +, so the listing tells you which branches are safe to delete without ceremony.

  feature-search
* main
+ experiment

Remotes too

git branch -a          # local and remote-tracking
git branch -r          # remote-tracking only

Remote-tracking branches are named origin/feature-search and record where the remote was the last time you fetched. They are not local branches, and you cannot check one out without creating a local branch of the same name.

Finding a branch by name

git branch --list "*search*"

Shell globbing works here, which matters once a repository has a hundred branches and scrolling is not an option.

Cleaning up

git branch -d merged-branch    # refuses if it is not merged
git branch -D merged-branch    # deletes regardless

-d is the one you want. It refuses to delete a branch whose commits are not reachable anywhere else, so you have to go out of your way to lose work, which is the correct default. If Git refuses, the branch is either unmerged or its commits exist only on it — commit them somewhere first, or find them in the reflog. See Undoing Changes.

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