To delete all branches on remote that are already merged:

git branch -r --merged | grep -v master | sed 's/origin\//:/' | xargs -n 1 git push origin 

In more recent versions of Git

git branch -r --merged | grep -v master | sed 's/origin\///' | xargs -n 1 git push --delete origin 

UPDATE (by @oliver; since does not fit in comment, but enough answers already): if you are on branch ABC then ABC will appear in the results of git branch -r --merged because the branch is not specified, so branch defaults to current branch, and a branch always qualifies as merged to itself (because there are no differences between a branch and itself!).

So either specify the branch:

git branch -r --merged master | grep -v master ... 

OR first checkout master:

git checkout master | git branch -r --merged | grep -v ... 

Just extending Adam's answer a little bit:

Add this to your Git configuration by running git config -e --global

[alias] cleanup = "!git branch --merged | grep -v '\\*\\|master\\|develop' | xargs -n 1 -r git branch -d" 

And then you can delete all the local merged branches doing a simple git cleanup.

You'll want to exclude the master, main & develop branches from those commands.

Local git clear:

git branch --merged | grep -v '\*\|master\|main\|develop' | xargs -n 1 git branch -d 

Remote git clear:

git branch -r --merged | grep -v '\*\|master\|main\|develop' | sed 's/origin\///' | xargs -n 1 git push --delete origin 

Sync local registry of remote branches:

git fetch -p 

This also works to delete all merged branches except master.

git branch --merged | grep -v '^* master$' | grep -v '^ master$' | grep -v '^* main$' | grep -v '^ main$' | xargs git branch -d 

Edit: Also ignoring main branch as it's being used these days

For those of you that are on Windows and prefer PowerShell scripts, here is one that deletes local merged branches:

function Remove-MergedBranches { git branch --merged | ForEach-Object { $_.Trim() } | Where-Object { $_ -NotMatch "^\*" } | Where-Object { -not ( $_ -Like "*master" -or $_ -Like "*main" ) } | ForEach-Object { git branch -d $_ } } 

Or the short version:

git branch --merged | %{$_.trim()} | ?{$_ -notmatch 'dev' -and $_ -notmatch 'master' -and $_ -notmatch 'main'} | %{git branch -d $_.trim()} 

I've used Adam's answer for years now. That said, that there are some cases where it wasn't behaving as I expected:

1. branches that contained the word "master" were ignored, e.g. "notmaster" or "masterful", rather than only the master branch
2. branches that contained the word "dev" were ignored, e.g. "dev-test", rather than only the dev branch
3. deleting branches that are reachable from the HEAD of the current branch (that is, not necessarily master)
4. in detached HEAD state, deleting every branch reachable from the current commit

1 & 2 were straightforward to address, with just a change to the regex. 3 depends on the context of what you want (i.e. only delete branches that haven't been merged into master or against your current branch). 4 has the potential to be disastrous (although recoverable with git reflog), if you unintentionally ran this in detached HEAD state.

Finally, I wanted this to all be in a one-liner that didn't require a separate (Bash|Ruby|Python) script.

TL;DR

Create a git alias "sweep" that accepts an optional -f flag:

git config --global alias.sweep '!git branch --merged $([[ $1 != "-f" ]] \ && git rev-parse master) | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" \ | xargs git branch -d' 

and invoke it with:

git sweep 

or:

git sweep -f 

The long, detailed answer

It was easiest for me to create an example git repo with some branches and commits to test the correct behavior:

Create a new git repo with a single commit

mkdir sweep-test && cd sweep-test && git init echo "hello" > hello git add . && git commit -am "initial commit" 

Create some new branches

git branch foo && git branch bar && git branch develop && git branch notmaster && git branch masterful git branch --list 

 bar develop foo * master masterful notmaster 

Desired behavior: select all merged branches except: master, develop or current

The original regex misses the branches "masterful" and "notmaster" :

git checkout foo git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|master|dev)" 

 bar 

With the updated regex (which now excludes "develop" rather than "dev"):

git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" 

bar masterful notmaster 

Switch to branch foo, make a new commit, then checkout a new branch, foobar, based on foo:

echo "foo" > foo git add . && git commit -am "foo" git checkout -b foobar echo "foobar" > foobar git add . && git commit -am "foobar" 

My current branch is foobar, and if I re-run the above command to list the branches I want to delete, the branch "foo" is included even though it hasn't been merged into master:

git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" 

 bar foo masterful notmaster 

However, if I run the same command on master, the branch "foo" is not included:

git checkout master && git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" 

 bar masterful notmaster 

And this is simply because git branch --merged defaults to the HEAD of the current branch if not otherwise specified. At least for my workflow, I don't want to delete local branches unless they've been merged to master, so I prefer the following variant using git rev-parse:

git checkout foobar git branch --merged $(git rev-parse master) | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" 

 bar masterful notmaster 

Detached HEAD state

Relying on the default behavior of git branch --merged has even more significant consequences in detached HEAD state:

git checkout foobar git checkout HEAD~0 git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" 

 bar foo foobar masterful notmaster 

This would have deleted the branch I was just on, "foobar" along with "foo", which is almost certainly not the desired outcome. With our revised command, however:

git branch --merged $(git rev-parse master) | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" 

 bar masterful notmaster 

One line, including the actual delete

git branch --merged $(git rev-parse master) | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" | xargs git branch -d 

All wrapped up into a git alias "sweep":

git config --global alias.sweep '!git branch --merged $([[ $1 != "-f" ]] \ && git rev-parse master) | egrep -v "(^\*|^\s*(master|develop)$)" \ | xargs git branch -d' 

The alias accepts an optional -f flag. The default behavior is to only delete branches that have been merged into master, but the -f flag will delete branches that have been merged into the current branch.

git sweep 

Deleted branch bar (was 9a56952). Deleted branch masterful (was 9a56952). Deleted branch notmaster (was 9a56952). 

git sweep -f 

Deleted branch foo (was 2cea1ab). 

So many bad answers here. This is what you probably want:

git branch --delete $(git branch --merged master --no-contains master --format='%(refname:short)') 

This selects all local branches that have been merged into master (including master), and that aren't descendent of master (which excludes master itself). The --format is necessary because by default Git prints asterisks for the currently checked out branches. You might be able to do this with git for-each-ref too but it seems more complicated (it lists remote branches too).

You don't want:

• git branch --merged (without master): This will list branches that have been "merged" into your currently checked out commit (i.e. HEAD), which is probably unexpected and not what you want.
• | grep -v master: There's no need for this; you can just use --no-contains.
• | xargs: Again, no need. git branch --delete can delete more than one branch.

Update: I've been using this for a while and it works pretty well. There are two minor flaws:

1. If there are no branches to delete it will give you an error. That's fine for interactive use IMO. You shouldn't be using this in a script anyway since it's Bash and Bash should not be used for scripting.

2. It won't delete branches that point to the same commit as master. I have a tool that automatically rebases all my branches, and for ones that have been merged it can leave them in this state. This may not matter to you.

Using Git version 2.5.0:

git branch -d `git branch --merged` 

If you're on Windows you can use Windows Powershell or Powershell 7 with Out-GridView to have a nice list of branches and select with mouse which one you want to delete:

git branch --format "%(refname:short)" --merged | Out-GridView -PassThru | % { git branch -d $_ } 

after clicking OK Powershell will pass this branches names to git branch -d command and delete them

My favorite and simple script:

git branch --merged | grep -E -v "(master|main|develop|other)" | xargs git branch -d 

You can add the commit to the --merged option. This way you can make sure only to remove branches which are merged into i.e. the origin/master

Following command will remove merged branches from your origin.

git branch -r --merged origin/master | grep -v "^.*master" | sed s:origin/:: |xargs -n 1 git push origin --delete 

You can test which branches will be removed replacing the git push origin --delete with echo

git branch -r --merged origin/master | grep -v "^.*master" | sed s:origin/:: |xargs -n 1 echo 

You can use gbda alias/function if you're using OhMyZSH with git plugin.

I use the following Ruby script to delete my already merged local and remote branches. If I'm doing it for a repository with multiple remotes and only want to delete from one, I just add a select statement to the remotes list to only get the remotes I want.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby current_branch = `git symbolic-ref --short HEAD`.chomp if current_branch != "master" if $?.exitstatus == 0 puts "WARNING: You are on branch #{current_branch}, NOT master." else puts "WARNING: You are not on a branch" end puts end puts "Fetching merged branches..." remote_branches= `git branch -r --merged`. split("\n"). map(&:strip). reject {|b| b =~ /\/(#{current_branch}|master)/} local_branches= `git branch --merged`. gsub(/^\* /, ''). split("\n"). map(&:strip). reject {|b| b =~ /(#{current_branch}|master)/} if remote_branches.empty? && local_branches.empty? puts "No existing branches have been merged into #{current_branch}." else puts "This will remove the following branches:" puts remote_branches.join("\n") puts local_branches.join("\n") puts "Proceed?" if gets =~ /^y/i remote_branches.each do |b| remote, branch = b.split(/\//) `git push #{remote} :#{branch}` end # Remove local branches `git branch -d #{local_branches.join(' ')}` else puts "No branches removed." end end 

How to delete merged branches in PowerShell console

git branch --merged | %{git branch -d $_.Trim()} 

If you want to exclude master or any other branch names, you can pipe with PowerShell Select-String like this and pass the result to git branch -d:

git branch -d $(git branch --merged | Select-String -NotMatch "master" | %{$_.ToString().Trim()}) 

Note: I am not happy with previous answers, (not working on all systems, not working on remote, not specifying the --merged branch, not filtering exactly). So, I add my own answer.

There are two main cases:

Local

You want to delete local branches that are already merged to another local branch. During the deletion, you want to keep some important branches, like master, develop, etc.

git branch --format "%(refname:short)" --merged master | grep -E -v '^master$|^feature/develop$' | xargs -n 1 git branch -d 

Notes:

• git branch output --format ".." is to strip whitespaces and allow exact grep matching
• grep -E is used instead of egrep, so it works also in systems without egrep (i.e.: git for windows).
• grep -E -v '^master$|^feature/develop$' is to specify local branches that I don't want to delete
• xargs -n 1 git branch -d: perform the deletion of local branches (it won't work for remote ones)
• of course you get an error if you try deleting the branch currently checked-out. So, I suggest to switch to master beforehand.

Remote

You want to delete remote branches that are already merged to another remote branch. During the deletion, you want to keep some important branches, like HEAD, master, releases, etc.

git branch -r --format "%(refname:short)" --merged origin/master | grep -E -v '^*HEAD$|^*/master$|^*release' | cut -d/ -f2- | xargs -n 1 git push --delete origin 

Notes:

• for remote, we use the -r option and provide the full branch name: origin/master
• grep -E -v '^*HEAD$|^*/master$|^*release' is to match the remote branches that we don't want to delete.
• cut -d/ -f2- : remove the unneeded 'origin/' prefix that otherwise is printed out by the git branch command.
• xargs -n 1 git push --delete origin : perform the deletion of remote branches.

I use this:

git branch --delete $(git branch --format '%(refname:short)' --merged | grep --invert-match 'main\|master\|branch-to-skip') 

It lists all merged branched in the specified format, then it feeds that list to git branch --delete.

kuboon's answer missed deleting branches which have the word master in the branch name. The following improves on his answer:

git branch -r --merged | grep -v "origin/master$" | sed 's/\s*origin\///' | xargs -n 1 git push --delete origin 

Of course, it does not delete the "master" branch itself :)

There is no command in Git that will do this for you automatically. But you can write a script that uses Git commands to give you what you need. This could be done in many ways depending on what branching model you are using.

If you need to know if a branch has been merged into master the following command will yield no output if myTopicBranch has been merged (i.e. you can delete it)

$ git rev-list master | grep $(git rev-parse myTopicBranch) 

You could use the Git branch command and parse out all branches in Bash and do a for loop over all branches. In this loop you check with above command if you can delete the branch or not.

git branch --merged | grep -Ev '^(. master|\*)' | xargs -n 1 git branch -d will delete all local branches except the current checked out branch and/or master.

Here's a helpful article for those looking to understand these commands: Git Clean: Delete Already Merged Branches, by Steven Harman.

You can use git-del-br tool.

git-del-br -a 

You can install it via pip using

pip install git-del-br 

P.S: I am the author of the tool. Any suggestions/feedback are welcome.

I use a git-flow esque naming scheme, so this works very safely for me:

git branch --merged | grep -e "^\s\+\(fix\|feature\)/" | xargs git branch -d 

It basically looks for merged commits that start with either string fix/ or feature/.

The accepted solution is pretty good, but has the one issue that it also deletes local branches that were not yet merged into a remote.

If you look at the output of you will see something like

$ git branch --merged master -v api_doc 3a05427 [gone] Start of describing the Java API bla 52e080a Update wording. branch-1.0 32f1a72 [maven-release-plugin] prepare release 1.0.1 initial_proposal 6e59fb0 [gone] Original proposal, converted to AsciiDoc. issue_248 be2ba3c Skip unit-for-type checking. This needs more work. (#254) master be2ba3c Skip unit-for-type checking. This needs more work. (#254) 

Branches bla and issue_248 are local branches that would be deleted silently.

But you can also see the word [gone], which indicate branches that had been pushed to a remote (which is now gone) and thus denote branches can be deleted.

The original answer can thus be changed to (split into multiline for shorter line length)

git branch --merged master -v | \ grep "\\[gone\\]" | \ sed -e 's/^..//' -e 's/\S* .*//' | \ xargs git branch -d 

to protect the not yet merged branches. Also the grepping for master to protect it, is not needed, as this has a remote at origin and does not show up as gone.

On Windows with git bash installed egrep -v will not work

git branch --merged | grep -E -v "(master|test|dev)" | xargs git branch -d 

where grep -E -v is equivalent of egrep -v

Use -d to remove already merged branches or -D to remove unmerged branches

If you'd like to delete all local branches that are already merged in to the branch that you are currently on, then I've come up with a safe command to do so, based on earlier answers:

git branch --merged | grep -v \* | grep -v '^\s*master$' | xargs -t -n 1 git branch -d 

This command will not affect your current branch or your master branch. It will also tell you what it's doing before it does it, using the -t flag of xargs.

Alias version of Adam's updated answer:

[alias] branch-cleanup = "!git branch --merged | egrep -v \"(^\\*|master|dev)\" | xargs git branch -d #" 

Also, see this answer for handy tips on escaping complex aliases.

Below query works for me

for branch in `git branch -r --merged | grep -v '\*\|master\|develop'|awk 'NR > 0 {print$1}'|awk '{gsub(/origin\//, "")}1'`;do git push origin --delete $branch; done 

and this will filter any given branch in the grep pipe.

Works well over http clone, but not so well for the ssh connection.

Based on some of these answers I made my own Bash script to do it too!

It uses git branch --merged and git branch -d to delete the branches that have been merged and prompts you for each of the branches before deleting.

merged_branches () { local current_branch=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD) for branch in $(git branch --merged | cut -c3-) do echo "Branch $branch is already merged into $current_branch." echo "Would you like to delete it? [Y]es/[N]o " read REPLY if [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy] ]]; then git branch -d $branch fi done } 

Try the following command:

git branch -d $(git branch --merged | grep -vw $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)) 

By using git rev-parse will get the current branch name in order to exclude it. If you got the error, that means there are no local branches to remove.

To do the same with remote branches (change origin with your remote name), try:

git push origin -vd $(git branch -r --merged | grep -vw $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD) | cut -d/ -f2) 

^{In case you've multiple remotes, add grep origin | before cut to filter only the origin.}

If above command fails, try to delete the merged remote-tracking branches first:

git branch -rd $(git branch -r --merged | grep -vw $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)) 

Then git fetch the remote again and use the previous git push -vdcommand again.

If you're using it often, consider adding as aliases into your ~/.gitconfig file.

In case you've removed some branches by mistake, use git reflog to find the lost commits.

As of 2018.07

Add this to [alias] section of your ~/.gitconfig:

sweep = !"f() { git branch --merged | egrep -v \"(^\\*|master|dev)\" || true | xargs git branch -d; }; f" 

Now you can just call git sweep to perform that needed cleanup.