Sort branches by last commit date

Such a small quality of life improvement. My `git branch` output is a graveyard sometimes, this would be handy.

Even better (IMHO!) is `git config branch.sort -committerdate` (note the `-`). This will sort newest committer date first.

FYI/fwiw Fish shell autocompletes branches sorted by last commit date when writing out git commands. It also provides completions for commitish objects grouped by class, giving precedence to the usual targets first, with each group sorted by its own sort key. Handy!

Huge fan of `git recent` [0] for this purpose.

[0] - https://github.com/paulirish/git-recent

I love this little fzf bash function that I wrote a few years ago: https://gist.github.com/thomasaarholt/141df779f3f16b641701b4...

It opens a fuzzy finder window showing the branches you have in the repo, sorted by recency. Also shows the latest committer and the date. Hit enter on the one you want to swap to it.

yep, i have a little helper in my zshrc for this sort of thing:

alias git-hot-refs="git branch --sort=committerdate | tail"

How many branches would you need to have to make this worthwhile?

I just click on tower and open it, much better

Or just have `jj log` custom-configured.

Feels like the type of problem you could simply choose to not have in the first place (by not using git).

Another useful one if you have a large number of tags and want to see the most recently created ones first:

    git config --global tag.sort -creatordate

(`-creatordate` reverses the sort so that the newest come first.)

Or just have `jj log` custom-configured.

Even better (IMHO!) is `git config branch.sort -committerdate` (note the `-`). This will sort newest committer date first.

Rebase an old branch and it suddenly looks recent again. The rewritten tip gets a fresh committer date.

`git config --global branch.sort -committerdate`

I have this as an alias in my .zshrc!! Very handy

Such a small quality of life improvement. My `git branch` output is a graveyard sometimes, this would be handy.

yep, i have a little helper in my zshrc for this sort of thing:

alias git-hot-refs="git branch --sort=committerdate | tail"

I just click on tower and open it, much better

I love this little fzf bash function that I wrote a few years ago: https://gist.github.com/thomasaarholt/141df779f3f16b641701b4...

It opens a fuzzy finder window showing the branches you have in the repo, sorted by recency. Also shows the latest committer and the date. Hit enter on the one you want to swap to it.

Feels like the type of problem you could simply choose to not have in the first place (by not using git).

Huge fan of `git recent` [0] for this purpose.

[0] - https://github.com/paulirish/git-recent

How many branches would you need to have to make this worthwhile?

Spoiler it’s fzf under the hood. But it’s perfect and simple.

At any time I'm working across 5-30 branches (some when I'm reviewing other folks' code) so it's handy to see my latest branches

At my current job it's fairly frequent that I have 5+ active branches open for a repo. Not ideal and that's another topic, but it is nice to be able to sort branches because of that.

I've seen monorepos with over 10k active branches. But even at a smaller scale (10-100 branches), it becomes useful when manually stacking and/or rebasing, especially if you have a smaller terminal.

Another useful one if you have a large number of tags and want to see the most recently created ones first:

    git config --global tag.sort -creatordate

(`-creatordate` reverses the sort so that the newest come first.)

`git config --global branch.sort -committerdate`

Rebase an old branch and it suddenly looks recent again. The rewritten tip gets a fresh committer date.

Yes. This is what one wants, since if you have recently rebased it, you're clearly doing work with it. Meanwhile, branches you don't care to touch sink to the bottom of the list.

At my current job it's fairly frequent that I have 5+ active branches open for a repo. Not ideal and that's another topic, but it is nice to be able to sort branches because of that.

At any time I'm working across 5-30 branches (some when I'm reviewing other folks' code) so it's handy to see my latest branches

Spoiler it’s fzf under the hood. But it’s perfect and simple.

I've seen monorepos with over 10k active branches. But even at a smaller scale (10-100 branches), it becomes useful when manually stacking and/or rebasing, especially if you have a smaller terminal.

I often have a few dozen branches open at work, because I'm often waiting for reviews to go through but don't want to be blocked. I also often run little experiments in the background, like having an AI agent try to reliably reproduce a flake I saw in the CI (and then producing a fix for the reliably reproducer).

Yes. This is what one wants, since if you have recently rebased it, you're clearly doing work with it. Meanwhile, branches you don't care to touch sink to the bottom of the list.

August 24, 2026

9:55 AM

I have too many git branches and like many people I developed a convoluted script to show me the most recent ones. I ran this command many times a day for years:

function branches {
  for k in `git branch | sed "s/^..//"`; do
    echo -e `git log --color -1 --pretty=format:"%Cgreen%ci %Cblue%cr%Creset" "$k"`\\t"$k";
  done | sort
}

This outputs the date as the first column in the output so that sort works. Turns out with modern git it’s totally unnecessary. Just configure git branch to sort by the last commit date:

git config branch.sort committerdate

You can also supply this on a one-off basis as git branch --sort committerdate.

What else can you sort by? The manual says “The keys supported are the same as those in git-for-each-ref(1).” The manpage for git-for-each-ref lists a ton of fields, including some that don’t make sense to me as sort keys. Here are a few that stood out as interesting:

authordate, committerdate, creatordate, taggerdate
contents:size: The size in bytes of the commit or tag message.
push: The name of a local ref which represents the @{push} location for the displayed ref.
refname: The name of the ref (the part after $GIT_DIR/) (this is the default).
upstream: The name of a local ref which can be considered “upstream” from the displayed ref.

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Sort branches by last commit date

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August 24, 2026