Git: How do I list only local branches?

git branch -a shows both remote and local branches.

git branch -r shows remote branches.

Is there a way to list just the local branches?

Just git branch without options.

From the manpage:

> With no arguments, existing branches are listed and the current branch will be highlighted with an asterisk.

Just the plain command

git branch

git branch -a - All branches.

git branch -r - Remote branches only.

git branch - Local branches only.

One of the most straightforward ways to do it is

git for-each-ref --format='%(refname:short)' refs/heads/

This works perfectly for scripts as well.

If the leading asterisk is a problem, I pipe the git branch as follows

git branch | awk -F ' +' '! /\(no branch\)/ {print $2}'

This also eliminates the '(no branch)' line that shows up when you have detached head.

Here's how to list local branches that do not have a remote branch in origin with the same name:

git branch | sed 's|* |  |' | sort > local
git branch -r | sed 's|origin/||' | sort > remote
comm -23 local remote

Other way for get a list just local branch is:

git branch -a | grep -v 'remotes'

There's a great answer to a post about how to delete local-only branches. In it, the following builds a command to list out the local branches:

git branch -vv | cut -c 3- | awk '$3 !~/\[/ { print $1 }'

The answer has a great explanation about how this command was derived, so I would suggest you go and read that post.

To complement gertvdijk's answer - I'm adding few screenshots in case it helps someone quick.

In my Git Bash shell if I run below command:

git branch

This command (without parameters) shows all my local branches. The current branch which is currently checked out is shown in different color (green) along with an asterisk (*) prefix which is really intuitive.

When you try to see all branches including the remote branches using -a(stands for all) parameter:

git branch -a

Then remote branches which aren't checked out yet are also shown in different (red) color:

Use:

git show-ref --heads

The answer by gertvdijk is the most concise and elegant, but this may help grasp the idea that refs/heads/* are equivalent to local branches.

Most of the time the refs/heads/master ref is a file at .git/refs/heads/master that contains a Git commit hash that points to the Git object that represents the current state of your local master branch, so each file under .git/refs/heads/* represents a local branch.

PowerShell users can use its Compare-Object cmdlet to do something like this:

function match-branch {
    $localBranches = ((git branch -l) -replace "\*", "") -replace " ", ""
    $remoteBranches = (((git branch -r) -replace "\*", "") -replace " ", "") -replace "origin/", ""
    Compare-Object -ReferenceObject $localBranches -DifferenceObject $remoteBranches -IncludeEqual
    | Select-Object @{Label = "branch"; Expression = { $_.InputObject } },
    @{Label = ”both”; Expression = { $_.SideIndicator -eq "==" } },
    @{Label = ”remoteOnly”; Expression = { $_.SideIndicator -eq "=>" } },
    @{Label = ”localOnly”; Expression = { $_.SideIndicator -eq "<=" } }
}

Example Output

branch        both remoteOnly localOnly
------        ---- ---------- ---------
master        True      False     False
HEAD->master False       True     False
renamed      False       True     False