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Old local branches clutter your local repository but provide no further value. You can delete all local branches at once with the help of this tutorial.

We script this task using commands such as grep, , xargsand for-each-ref. We show various options for different use cases.

We also provide a one-line quick hack for deleting all local branches at the end of the tutorial.

Verbose script to delete all local branches in Git exceptmaster

We write the following script to Git to delete masterall local branches except the branch.

git for-each-ref --format '%(refname:short)' refs/heads | grep -v "master\|main\|develop" |
xargs git branch -D

This script will delete masterall local branches except the branch, including unmerged branches.

Let's break down this script and see how it works.

1. for-each-refIterate over all references in the repo. formatstring '%refname:short'Extract a short ref name from the iterable and refs/headspoint to them heads.

   We use a pipe to pass the output |of for-each-refto grepthe command operator.

2. grepThe command searches the ref heads passed to it for matches to the expression string master\|main\|develop. This covers masterdifferent names for your branches - you might have named them mainor develop.

3. grepThe -p option in the command -vis used to invert the selection. So it will only select those master\|main\|developbranches that do not match the expression - essentially, it selects masterall local branches except .

4. Finally, xargsthe command gets all these selected branches and passes them as arguments to the command git branch -D. git branch -Dis the command that forcefully deletes all branches passed as arguments.

-dModify the script to delete only merged branches using the option in Git

We can modify the above script to delete only the merged branches. We -dreplace the final -Doption with the option.

-dis a soft delete option that only deletes merged branches.

git for-each-ref --format '%(refname:short)' refs/heads | grep -v "master\|main\|develop" |
xargs git branch -d

We see first_branchthat is merged, but second_branchis not merged.

Our modified script removes only the merged ones first_branch, but leaves the unmerged ones second_branch.

Deleting all local branches in Git using a simpler script

Some people may find the above script overly complex and overkill. We can use a simpler script to accomplish the same task.

git branch | grep -v "master\|main\|develop" | xargs git branch -D

git branchThis script replaces complex commands with simple ones for-each-ref.

Note that Git is not recommended for use in scripts git branch. But sometimes we can deviate from best practices to get a quick solution.

Modify the script to delete masterlocal branches with names likemaster-prod

Sometimes, your repository might have masterbranches with names like . For example, some of your branches might have names like master-prodor .master-draft

"master\|main\|develop"We can modify the regular expression in the script from to "master$\|main$\|develop$"to achieve this function.

git branch | grep -v "master$\|main$\|develop$" | xargs git branch -D

Short script to delete all local branches in Git

We can pass some clever regular expressions to grepto shorten our script even further.

git checkout master
git branch | grep -v "^*" |xargs git branch -D

The expression represents all branches starting "^*"from the current branch ( ) . We did first , so our current branch is .*^git checkout mastermaster

Thus -v "^*"filtering out our current branch masterand deleting all other local branches.

Single line hard delete command to delete all local branches in Git

Finally, as promised, we'll show you a one-line hard delete command for deleting all local branches in Git.

git branch -D $(git branch)

This command deletes all branches except the one you are on.