Make a TUI for switching and deleting git branches

Is dealing with git branches annoying to anyone else? There’s a lot of typing long branch names, especially if you’re cleaning up a bunch of old branches at oncex.

Enter fzf, which provides a nice terminal UI for selecting things. You pipe in some output and it shows each line in a list that you can navigate by typing to search or using the arrow keys.

For example, here’s a simple one liner for making a selectable list of your git branches:

git branch | fzf | cut -c 3-

The item you select is the return value — in this case, the name of the branch. (The cut -c 3- removes the leading whitespace and * from the branches.)

We can get a bit fancier, though. If you pass a --preview flag followed by a command with a placeholder, fzf will also display the output of a that second command in a “preview” panel on the right. The placeholder is replaced by the currently highlighted option, so the preview changes as you navigate.

So to build a terminal UI for switching branches, you might use this:

git branch | fzf --preview 'git log -p main..{-1} --color=always {-1}' | cut -c 3- | xargs git switch

Deleting branches is pretty similar. fzf has a flag -m that lets you select multiple options. Pipe that to xargs git branch -d and you’re good:

git branch | fzf --preview 'git log -p main..{-1} --color=always {-1}' | cut -c 3- | xargs git branch -d

I have aliases for both of those commands in my fish config:

alias gs="git branch | fzf --preview 'git log -p main..{-1} --color=always {-1}' | cut -c 3- | xargs git switch"
alias gbd="git branch | fzf --preview 'git log -p main..{-1} --color=always {-1}' | cut -c 3- | xargs git branch -d"