How do I list all remote branches in Git 1.7+?

I've tried git branch -r, but that only lists remote branches that I've tracked locally. How do I find the list of those that I haven't? (It doesn't matter to me whether the command lists all remote branches or only those that are untracked.)

Dustin

For the vast majority^[1] of visitors here, the correct and simplest answer to the question "How do I list all remote branches in Git 1.7+?" is:

git branch -r

For a small minority^[1]git branch -r does not work. If git branch -r does not work try:

git ls-remote --heads <remote-name>

If git branch -r does not work, then maybe as Cascabel says "you've modified the default refspec, so that git fetch and git remote update don't fetch all the remote's branches".

^[1] As of the writing of this footnote 2018-Feb, I looked at the comments and see that the git branch -r works for the vast majority (about 90% or 125 out of 140).

If git branch -r does not work, check git config --get remote.origin.fetch contains a wildcard (*) as per this answer

remote show shows all the branches on the remote, including those that are not tracked locally and even those that have not yet been fetched.

git remote show <remote-name>

It also tries to show the status of the branches relative to your local repo:

> git remote show origin
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: C:/git/.\remote_repo.git
  Push  URL: C:/git/.\remote_repo.git
  HEAD branch: master
  Remote branches:
    branch_that_is_not_even_fetched new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
    branch_that_is_not_tracked      tracked
    branch_that_is_tracked          tracked
    master                          tracked
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    branch_that_is_tracked merges with remote branch_that_is_tracked
    master                 merges with remote master
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    branch_that_is_tracked pushes to branch_that_is_tracked (fast-forwardable)
    master                 pushes to master                 (up to date)

git branch -a | grep remotes/*

Using git branch -r lists all remote branches and git branch -a lists all branches on local and remote. These lists get outdated though. To keep these lists up-to-date, run

git remote update --prune

which will update your local branch list with all new ones from the remote and remove any that are no longer there. Running this update command without the --prune will retrieve new branches but not delete ones no longer on the remote.

You can speed up this update by specifying a remote, otherwise it will pull updates from all remotes you have added, like so

git remote update --prune origin

But

git branch -ar

should do it.

Michael Horojanski

Git Branching - Remote Branches

git ls-remote

Git documentation.

You also may do git fetch followed by a git branch -r. Without fetch you will not see the most current branches.

The simplest way I found:

git branch -a

TL;TR;

This is the solution of your problem:

git remote update --prune    # To update all remotes
git branch -r                # To display remote branches

or:

git remote update --prune    # To update all remotes
git branch <TAB>             # To display all branches

The best command to run is git remote show [remote]. This will show all branches, remote and local, tracked and untracked.

Here's an example from an open source project:

> git remote show origin
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway-android
  Push  URL: https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway-android
  HEAD branch: master
  Remote branches:
    amazon-rc2                   new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
    amazon-rc3                   new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
    arrivalStyleBDefault         new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
    develop                      tracked
    master                       tracked
    refs/remotes/origin/branding stale (use 'git remote prune' to remove)
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    develop merges with remote develop
    master  merges with remote master
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    develop pushes to develop (local out of date)
    master  pushes to master  (up to date)

If we just want to get the remote branches, we can use grep. The command we'd want to use would be:

grep "\w*\s*(new|tracked)" -E

With this command:

> git remote show origin | grep "\w*\s*(new|tracked)" -E
    amazon-rc2                   new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
    amazon-rc3                   new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
    arrivalStyleBDefault         new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
    develop                      tracked
    master                       tracked

You can also create an alias for this:

git config --global alias.branches "!git remote show origin | grep \w*\s*(new|tracked) -E"

Then you can just run git branches.

With GitBash, you Can use:

git branch -a

try this....

git fetch origin
git branch -a

Make sure that the remote origin you are listing is really the repository that you want and not an older clone.

I ended up doing a mess shell pipeline to get what I wanted, just merged branches from the origin remote:

git branch -r --all --merged \
    | tail -n +2 \
    | grep -P '^  remotes/origin/(?!HEAD)' \
    | perl -p -e 's/^  remotes\/origin\///g;s/master\n//g'

Using this Command,

git log -r --oneline --no-merges --simplify-by-decoration --pretty=format:"%n %Cred CommitID %Creset: %h %n %Cred Remote Branch %Creset :%d %n %Cred Commit Message %Creset: %s %n"


CommitID       : 27385d919 
Remote Branch  : (origin/ALPHA) 
Commit Message :  New branch created

List all remote branches including commit messages,commit Id that are referred by remote branches.

I would use:

git branch -av

This command not only shows you the list of all branches, including remote branches starting with /remote but provides you the * feedback on what you updated and the last commit comments.

If there's a remote branch that you know should be listed, but it isn't getting listed, you might want to verify that your origin is set up properly with this: