How to Delete Fully Merged Branches

Over time, your local repository can get cluttered with old branches. To keep things tidy, it's a good practice to delete branches that have been fully merged into your main branch.

Deleting All Merged Branches at Once

First, make sure you are on your main branch:

$ git checkout main

Then, you can run this command to find and delete all local branches that have been merged into main:

$ git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|main|dev)" | xargs git branch -d

Let's break down this command:

• git branch --merged: This lists all branches that have been fully merged into your current branch (which should be main).
• egrep -v "(^\*|main|dev)": This filters the list. The -v flag inverts the match, so it removes the current branch (*), the main branch, and a dev branch from the list. You should adjust this part to fit your branching workflow, protecting any other long-running branches you might have.
• xargs git branch -d: This takes the filtered list of branches and, for each one, runs the git branch -d command to delete it.

Deleting a Single Branch

If you just want to delete a single local branch, you can use the -d (or --delete) flag:

$ git branch -d feature/new-login

This is a "safe" operation: Git will prevent you from deleting a branch if it has changes that haven't been merged yet.

To force the deletion of a branch, you can use the -D flag (a capital D). Be careful, as this will discard any unmerged work on that branch.

$ git branch -D feature/new-login

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Deleting Remote Branches

Keep in mind that these commands only delete local branches. To delete a branch from a remote repository, you need to use the git push command with the --delete flag:

$ git push origin --delete feature/new-login

Learn More

• Check out the chapter on Deleting Branches – Command Line edition in our free online book