Cleanup local branches in Git

Have you ever got to a point where you had too many local branches? It happens to me a lot, since we use branches for each feature, bug, or chore.

I end up with something like this and it get’s super dirty after a while

It really anoys me, so I’ll just share a quick command you can run on your console to do this cleanup!

I found this command in Stack Overflow in the following answer by Robert Corvus, which is a version that runs on Powerhsell.

Please be careful when running this command becase you can lose your changes

Before running it, remember to update the MY_MASTER_BRANCH_NAME to your main branch, which can be master like I use or the new ones that come by default called main.

git branch | %{ $_.Trim() } | ?{ $_ -ne 'MY_MASTER_BRANCH_NAME' } | %{ git branch -D $_ }

After you run this command, you will get an output like this

Hope it’s helpful to you!