Remove all branches without an upstream

Oftentimes I create branches or worktrees and they don't end up getting pushed to remote and I forget about them. Alternatively, they do get pushed and I forget to prune them. Here's how to list them, and optionally to remove them.

List all branches whose upstream has been removed

git branch --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:track)" | 
    grep "\[gone\]"

• git branch --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:gone)" lists the name and upstream status of each branch:

  $ git branch --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:track)"
  TheZoc/master [gone]
  gh-pages origin/gh-pages
  master origin/master
  
  

  • The clever bit here is that track target, that tells us the status of the remote branch that the local branch is tracking
  • man git-for-each-ref tells us:

upstream additionally respects :track to show [ahead N, behind M]... prints [gone] whenever unknown upstream ref is encountered.

• the branches we want are the ones which are [gone]:

$ git branch --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:track)" | 
    grep "\[gone\]"
TheZoc/master [gone]

• Finally, you can give this command an alias like git gone:

git config --global alias.gone '!git branch --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:track)" | grep "\[gone\]"'

Remove all branches whose upstream has been removed

To remove them, pull out the branch name and use xargs to remove the branches:

git branch --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:track)" | 
    grep "\[gone\]" |
    cut -f1 -d " " |
    xargs -I{} git branch -D {}

for example:

$ git branch --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:track)" | 
    grep "\[gone\]" | 
    cut -f1 -d " " |
    xargs -I{} git branch -D {}
Deleted branch TheZoc/master (was 3d7b0ae).

You might alias this one to git rm-gone:

git config --global alias.rm-gone '!git branch --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:track)" | grep "\[gone\]" | cut -f1 -d " " | xargs -I{} git branch -D {}'

• Aug 31 2023: Note improved to use the track option thanks to Chris Adams