[git] How can I get a list of Git branches, ordered by most recent commit?

I want to get a list of all the branches in a Git repository with the "freshest" branches at the top, where the "freshest" branch is the one that's been committed to most recently (and is, therefore, more likely to be one I want to pay attention to).

Is there a way I can use Git to either (a) sort the list of branches by latest commit, or (b) get a list of branches together with each one's last-commit date, in some kind of machine-readable format?

Worst case, I could always run git branch to get a list of all the branches, parse its output, and then git log -n 1 branchname --format=format:%ci for each one, to get each branch's commit date. But this will run on a Windows box, where spinning up a new process is relatively expensive, so launching the Git executable once per branch could get slow if there are a lot of branches. Is there a way to do all this with a single command?

I use the following alias:

recent = "!r(){git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads --format='%(HEAD)%(color:yellow)%(refname:short)|%(color:bold green)%(committerdate:relative)|%(color:blue)%(subject)|%(color:magenta)%(authorname)%(color:reset)' --color=always | column -ts'|'}; r"

which produces:

Use '|' to separate.

git 2.7 (Q4 2015) will introduce branch sorting using directly git branch:
See commit aa3bc55, commit aedcb7d, commit 1511b22, commit f65f139, ... (23 Sep 2015), commit aedcb7d, commit 1511b22, commit ca41799 (24 Sep 2015), and commit f65f139, ... (23 Sep 2015) by Karthik Nayak (KarthikNayak).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 7f11b48, 15 Oct 2015)}

In particular, commit aedcb7d:

branch.c: use 'ref-filter' APIs

Make 'branch.c' use 'ref-filter' APIs for iterating through refs sorting. This removes most of the code used in 'branch.c' replacing it with calls to the 'ref-filter' library.

It adds the option --sort=<key>:

Sort based on the key given.
Prefix - to sort in descending order of the value.

You may use the --sort=<key> option multiple times, in which case the last key becomes the primary key.

The keys supported are the same as those in git for-each-ref.
Sort order defaults to sorting based on the full refname (including refs/... prefix). This lists detached HEAD (if present) first, then local branches and finally remote-tracking branches.

Here:

git branch --sort=-committerdate 

Or (see below with Git 2.19)

# if you are sure to /always/ want to see branches ordered by commits:
git config --global branch.sort -committerdate
git branch

See also commit 9e46833 (30 Oct 2015) by Karthik Nayak (KarthikNayak).
Helped-by: Junio C Hamano (gitster).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 415095f, 03 Nov 2015)}

When sorting as per numerical values (e.g. --sort=objectsize) there is no fallback comparison when both refs hold the same value. This can cause unexpected results (i.e. the order of listing refs with equal values cannot be pre-determined) as pointed out by Johannes Sixt ($gmane/280117).

Hence, fallback to alphabetical comparison based on the refname whenever the other criterion is equal.

$ git branch --sort=objectsize

*  (HEAD detached from fromtag)
      branch-two
      branch-one
      master

With Git 2.19, the sort order can be set by default.
git branch supports a config branch.sort, like git tag, which already had a config tag.sort.
See commit 560ae1c (16 Aug 2018) by Samuel Maftoul (``).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit d89db6f, 27 Aug 2018)}

branch.sort:

This variable controls the sort ordering of branches when displayed by git-branch.
Without the "--sort=<value>" option provided, the value of this variable will be used as the default.

To list remote branches, use git branch -r --sort=objectsize. The -r flag causes it to list remote branches instead of local branches.

With Git 2.27 (Q2 2020), "git branch" and other "for-each-ref" variants accepted multiple --sort=<key> options in the increasing order of precedence, but it had a few breakages around "--ignore-case" handling, and tie-breaking with the refname, which have been fixed.

See commit 7c5045f, commit 76f9e56 (03 May 2020) by Jeff King (peff).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 6de1630, 08 May 2020)}

ref-filter: apply fallback refname sort only after all user sorts

^{Signed-off-by: Jeff King}

Commit 9e468334b4 ("ref-filter: fallback on alphabetical comparison", 2015-10-30, Git v2.7.0-rc0 -- merge listed in batch #10) taught ref-filter's sort to fallback to comparing refnames.
But it did it at the wrong level, overriding the comparison result for a single "--sort" key from the user, rather than after all sort keys have been exhausted.

This worked correctly for a single "--sort" option, but not for multiple ones.
We'd break any ties in the first key with the refname and never evaluate the second key at all.

To make matters even more interesting, we only applied this fallback sometimes!
For a field like "taggeremail" which requires a string comparison, we'd truly return the result of strcmp(), even if it was 0.
But for numerical "value" fields like "taggerdate", we did apply the fallback. And that's why our multiple-sort test missed this: it uses taggeremail as the main comparison.

So let's start by adding a much more rigorous test. We'll have a set of commits expressing every combination of two tagger emails, dates, and refnames. Then we can confirm that our sort is applied with the correct precedence, and we'll be hitting both the string and value comparators.

That does show the bug, and the fix is simple: moving the fallback to the outer compare_refs() function, after all ref_sorting keys have been exhausted.

Note that in the outer function we don't have an "ignore_case" flag, as it's part of each individual ref_sorting element. It's debatable what such a fallback should do, since we didn't use the user's keys to match.
But until now we have been trying to respect that flag, so the least-invasive thing is to try to continue to do so.
Since all callers in the current code either set the flag for all keys or for none, we can just pull the flag from the first key. In a hypothetical world where the user really can flip the case-insensitivity of keys separately, we may want to extend the code to distinguish that case from a blanket "--ignore-case".

The implementation of "git branch --sort"^(man) wrt the detached HEAD display has always been hacky, which has been cleaned up with Git 2.31 (Q1 2021).

See commit 4045f65, commit 2708ce6, commit 7c269a7, commit d094748, commit 75c50e5 (07 Jan 2021), and commit 08bf6a8, commit ffdd02a (06 Jan 2021) by Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (avar).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 9e409d7, 25 Jan 2021)}

branch: show "HEAD detached" first under reverse sort

^{Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason}

Change the output of the likes of "git branch -l --sort=-objectsize"^(man) to show the "(HEAD detached at <hash>)" message at the start of the output.
Before the compare_detached_head() function added in a preceding commit we'd emit this output as an emergent effect.

It doesn't make any sense to consider the objectsize, type or other non-attribute of the "(HEAD detached at <hash>)" message for the purposes of sorting.
Let's always emit it at the top instead.
The only reason it was sorted in the first place is because we're injecting it into the ref-filter machinery so builtin/branch.c doesn't need to do its own "am I detached?" detection.

Adds some color (since pretty-format isn't available)

[alias]
    branchdate = for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ --format="%(authordate:short)%09%(objectname:short)%09%1B[0;33m%(refname:short)%1B[m%09"

Had some trouble handling single quotes on Mac in bash_profile when trying to set an alias. This answer helped resolve it " How to escape single quotes within single quoted strings

Working solution:

alias gb='git for-each-ref --sort=committerdate refs/heads/ --format='"'"'%(HEAD) %(color:yellow)%(refname:short)%(color:reset) - %(color:red)%(objectname:short)%(color:reset) - %(contents:subject) - %(authorname) (%(color:green)%(committerdate:relative)%(color:reset))'"'"''

P.S. Could not comment because of my reputation

I like using a relative date and shortening the branch name like this:

git for-each-ref --sort='-authordate:iso8601' --format=' %(authordate:relative)%09%(refname:short)' refs/heads

Which gives you output:

21 minutes ago  nathan/a_recent_branch
6 hours ago     master
27 hours ago    nathan/some_other_branch
29 hours ago    branch_c
6 days ago      branch_d

I recommend making a Bash file for adding all your favorite aliases and then sharing the script out to your team. Here's an example to add just this one:

#!/bin/sh

git config --global alias.branches "!echo ' ------------------------------------------------------------' && git for-each-ref --sort='-authordate:iso8601' --format=' %(authordate:relative)%09%(refname:short)' refs/heads && echo ' ------------------------------------------------------------'"

Then you can just do this to get a nicely formatted and sorted local branch list:

git branches

Update: Do this if you want coloring:

#!/bin/sh
#
(echo ' ------------------------------------------------------------??' && git for-each-ref --sort='-authordate:iso8601' --format=' %(authordate:relative)%09%(refname:short)' refs/heads && echo ' ------------------------------------------------------------??') | grep --color -E "$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)$|$"

git for-each-ref --sort=committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(HEAD) %(color:yellow)%(refname:short)%(color:reset) - %(color:red)%(objectname:short)%(color:reset) - %(contents:subject) - %(authorname) (%(color:green)%(committerdate:relative)%(color:reset))' this is that you need

git branch --sort=-committerdate | head -5

For any one interested in getting just the top 5 branch names sorted based on committer date.

Here is a simple command that lists all branches with latest commits:

git branch -v

To order by most recent commit, use

git branch -v --sort=committerdate

Source: http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Branching-Branch-Management

Here's the variation I was looking for:

git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate --format='%(committerdate)%09%(refname:short)' refs/heads/ | tail -r

That tail -r reverses the list so the most-recent commiterdate is last.

The accepted command-line answer rocks, but if you want something prettier, like a GUI, and your origin === "github".

You can click "Branches" in the repository. Or hit the URL directly: https://github.com/ORGANIZATION_NAME/REPO_NAME/branches

FYI, if you'd like to get a list of recently checked out branches (as opposed to recently committed) you can use Git's reflog:

$ git reflog | egrep -io "moving from ([^[:space:]]+)" | awk '{ print $3 }' | head -n5
master
stable
master
some-cool-feature
feature/improve-everything

See also: How can I get a list of Git branches that I've recently checked out?

Another variation:

git branch -r --sort=-committerdate --format='%(HEAD)%(color:yellow)%(refname:short)|%(color:bold green)%(committerdate:relative)|%(color:blue)%(subject)|%(color:magenta)%(authorname)%(color:reset)' --color=always | column -ts'|'

Worth noting that even though it's looking at changes in remote branches, it's worth syncing with origin before running the command (can use git fetch), as I found it can return out of date information if your local Git folder hasn't been updated in a while.

Also, this is a version that works in Windows cmd and PowerShell (didn't get output displayed in columns, would be interested to see if anyone gets this working):

git branch -r --sort=-committerdate --format="%(HEAD)%(color:yellow)%(refname:short)|%(color:bold green)%(committerdate:relative)|%(color:blue)%(subject)|%(color:magenta)%(authorname)%(color:reset)" --color=always

Here's a little script that I use to switch between recent branches:

#!/bin/bash
# sudo bash

re='^[0-9]+$'

if [[ "$1" =~ $re ]]; then
    lines="$1"
else
    lines=10
fi
branches="$(git recent | tail -n $lines | nl)"
branches_nf="$(git recent-nf | tail -n $lines | nl)"
echo "$branches"

# Prompt which server to connect to
max="$(echo "$branches" | wc -l)"
index=
while [[ ! ( "$index" =~ ^[0-9]+$ && "$index" -gt 0 && "$index" -le "$max" ) ]]; do
    echo -n "Checkout to: "
    read index
done

branch="$( echo "$branches_nf" | sed -n "${index}p" | awk '{ print $NF }' )"
git co $branch
clear

Using those two aliases:

recent = for-each-ref --sort=committerdate refs/heads/ --format=' %(color:blue) %(authorname) %(color:yellow)%(refname:short)%(color:reset)'
recent-nf = for-each-ref --sort=committerdate refs/heads/ --format=' %(authorname) %(refname:short)'

Just call that in a Git repository, and it will show you the last N branches (10 by default) and a number aside each. Input the number of the branch, and it checks out:

Normally we consider the remote branches recently. So try this

git fetch
git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/remotes/origin

As of Git 2.19 you can simply:

git branch --sort=-committerdate

You can also:

git config branch.sort -committerdate

So whenever you list branches in the current repository, it will be listed sorted by committerdate.

If whenever you list branches, you want them sorted by comitterdate:

git config --global branch.sort -committerdate

Disclaimer: I'm the author of this feature in Git, and I implemented it when I saw this question.

The other answers don't seem to allow passing -vv to get verbose output.

So here's a one-liner that sorts git branch -vv by commit date, preserving color etc:

git branch -vv --color=always | while read; do echo -e $(git log -1 --format=%ct $(echo "_$REPLY" | awk '{print $2}' | perl -pe 's/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g') 2> /dev/null || git log -1 --format=%ct)"\t$REPLY"; done | sort -r | cut -f 2

If you additionally want to print the commit date, you can use this version instead:

git branch -vv --color=always | while read; do echo -e $(git log -1 --format=%ci $(echo "_$REPLY" | awk '{print $2}' | perl -pe 's/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g') 2> /dev/null || git log -1 --format=%ci)" $REPLY"; done | sort -r | cut -d ' ' -f -1,4-

Sample output:

2013-09-15   master                  da39a3e [origin/master: behind 7] Some patch
2013-09-11 * (detached from 3eba4b8) 3eba4b8 Some other patch
2013-09-09   my-feature              e5e6b4b [master: ahead 2, behind 25] WIP

It's probably more readable split into multiple lines:

git branch -vv --color=always | while read; do
    # The underscore is because the active branch is preceded by a '*', and
    # for awk I need the columns to line up. The perl call is to strip out
    # ansi colors; if you don't pass --color=always above you can skip this
    local branch=$(echo "_$REPLY" | awk '{print $2}' | perl -pe 's/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g')
    # git log fails when you pass a detached head as a branch name.
    # Hide the error and get the date of the current head.
    local branch_modified=$(git log -1 --format=%ci "$branch" 2> /dev/null || git log -1 --format=%ci)
    echo -e "$branch_modified $REPLY"
# cut strips the time and timezone columns, leaving only the date
done | sort -r | cut -d ' ' -f -1,4-

This should also work with other arguments to git branch, e.g. -vvr to list remote-tracking branches, or -vva to list both remote-tracking and local branches.

I know there are a lot of answers already, but here are my two cents for a simple alias (I like to have my most recent branch at the bottom):

[alias]
        br = !git branch --sort=committerdate --color=always | tail -n15
[color "branch"]
        current = yellow
        local = cyan
        remote = red

This will give you a nice overview of your latest 15 branches, in color, with your current branch highlighted (and it has an asterisk).

This is based on saeedgnu's version, but with the current branch shown with a star and in color, and only showing anything that is not described as "months" or "years" ago:

current_branch="$(git symbolic-ref --short -q HEAD)"
git for-each-ref --sort=committerdate refs/heads \
  --format='%(refname:short)|%(committerdate:relative)' \
  | grep -v '\(year\|month\)s\? ago' \
  | while IFS='|' read branch date
    do
      start='  '
      end=''
      if [[ $branch = $current_branch ]]; then
        start='* \e[32m'
        end='\e[0m'
      fi
      printf "$start%-30s %s$end\\n" "$branch" "$date"
    done

I pipe the output from the accepted answer into dialog, to give me an interactive list:

#!/bin/bash

TMP_FILE=/tmp/selected-git-branch

eval `resize`
dialog --title "Recent Git Branches" --menu "Choose a branch" $LINES $COLUMNS $(( $LINES - 8 )) $(git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(refname:short) %(committerdate:short)') 2> $TMP_FILE

if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
    git checkout $(< $TMP_FILE)
fi

rm -f $TMP_FILE

clear

Save as (e.g.) ~/bin/git_recent_branches.sh and chmod +x it. Then git config --global alias.rb '!git_recent_branches.sh' to give me a new git rb command.

I was able to reference the previous examples to create something that works best for me.

git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(authordate:short) %(color:red)%(objectname:short) %(color:yellow)%(refname:short)%(color:reset) (%(color:green)%(committerdate:relative)%(color:reset))'

Git v2.19 introduces branch.sort config option (see branch.sort).

So git branch will sort by committer date (desc) by default with

# gitconfig
[branch]
    sort = -committerdate     # desc

script:

$ git config --global branch.sort -committerdate

Update:

So,

$ git branch
* dev
  master
  _

and

$ git branch -v
* dev    0afecf5 Merge branch 'oc' into dev
  master 652428a Merge branch 'dev'
  _      7159cf9 Merge branch 'bashrc' into dev

I had the same problem, so I wrote a Ruby gem called Twig. It lists branches in chronological order (newest first), and can also let you set a max age so that you don't list all branches (if you have a lot of them). For example:

$ twig

                              issue  status       todo            branch
                              -----  ------       ----            ------
2013-01-26 18:00:21 (7m ago)  486    In progress  Rebase          optimize-all-the-things
2013-01-26 16:49:21 (2h ago)  268    In progress  -               whitespace-all-the-things
2013-01-23 18:35:21 (3d ago)  159    Shipped      Test in prod  * refactor-all-the-things
2013-01-22 17:12:09 (4d ago)  -      -            -               development
2013-01-20 19:45:42 (6d ago)  -      -            -               master

It also lets you store custom properties for each branch, e.g., ticket id, status, todos, and filter the list of branches according to these properties. More info: http://rondevera.github.io/twig/

My best result as a script:

git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(refname:short)|%(committerdate:iso)|%(authorname)' |
    sed 's/refs\/heads\///g' |
    grep -v BACKUP  | 
    while IFS='|' read branch date author
    do 
        printf '%-15s %-30s %s\n' "$branch" "$date" "$author"
    done

Here's the optimal code, which combines the other two answers:

git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(committerdate:short) %(authorname) %(refname:short)'

List of Git branch names, ordered by most recent commit…

Expanding on Jakub’s answer and Joe’s tip, the following will strip out the "refs/heads/" so the output only displays the branch names:

Command:

git for-each-ref --count=30 --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(refname:short)'

Result:

I came up with the following command (for Git 2.13 and later):

git branch -r --sort=creatordate \
    --format "%(creatordate:relative);%(committername);%(refname:lstrip=-1)" \
    | grep -v ";HEAD$" \
    | column -s ";" -t

If you don’t have column you can replace the last line with

    | sed -e "s/;/\t/g"

The output looks like

6 years ago             Tom Preston-Werner  book
4 years, 4 months ago   Parker Moore        0.12.1-release
4 years ago             Matt Rogers         1.0-branch
3 years, 11 months ago  Matt Rogers         1.2_branch
3 years, 1 month ago    Parker Moore        v1-stable
12 months ago           Ben Balter          pages-as-documents
10 months ago           Jordon Bedwell      make-jekyll-parallel
6 months ago            Pat Hawks           to_integer
5 months ago            Parker Moore        3.4-stable-backport-5920
4 months ago            Parker Moore        yajl-ruby-2-4-patch
4 weeks ago             Parker Moore        3.4-stable
3 weeks ago             Parker Moore        rouge-1-and-2
19 hours ago            jekyllbot           master

I wrote a blog post about how the various pieces work.

I also needed colors, tags and remote references without any duplicates:

for ref in $(git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate --format="%(refname)" refs/heads/ refs/remotes ); do git log -n1 $ref --pretty=format:"%Cgreen%cr%Creset %C(yellow)%d%Creset %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset%n" | cat ; done | awk '! a[$0]++'

Because quoting can be hard, here is the alias for Bash:

alias glist='for ref in $(git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate --format="%(refname)" refs/heads/ refs/remotes ); do git log -n1 $ref --pretty=format:"%Cgreen%cr%Creset %C(yellow)%d%Creset %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset%n" | cat ; done | awk '"'! a["'$0'"]++'"

Simplest one to print along with last commit date:

git branch --all  --format='%(committerdate:short) %(refname:short)'|sort

Here is another script that does what all the other scripts do. In fact, it provides a function for your shell.

Its contribution is that it pulls some colours from your Git configuration (or uses defaults).

# Git Branch by Date
# Usage: gbd [ -r ]
gbd() {
    local reset_color=`tput sgr0`
    local subject_color=`tput setaf 4 ; tput bold`
    local author_color=`tput setaf 6`

    local target=refs/heads
    local branch_color=`git config --get-color color.branch.local white`

    if [ "$1" = -r ]
    then
        target=refs/remotes/origin
        branch_color=`git config --get-color color.branch.remote red`
    fi

    git for-each-ref --sort=committerdate $target --format="${branch_color}%(refname:short)${reset_color} ${subject_color}%(subject)${reset_color} ${author_color}- %(authorname) (%(committerdate:relative))${reset_color}"
}