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List branches sorted by most recent commit date

Written byPhuoc Nguyen
Created
12 May, 2021
Category
Tip
Tags
Git
If you're working on multiple projects or multiple features in the same project, you probably have different branches locally.
Sometimes, it's not easy for us to remember exactly the branch that we worked on most recently. The `branch` command lists all branches sorted by alphabetical order:
shell
$ git branch

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The `*` symbol indicates the current branch. The list might be longer if you don't often remove the merged branches which are usually not relevant anymore.
Fortunately, Git provides the `sort` parameter allowing us to list branches which are sorted by the commit date:
shell
$ git branch --sort=-committerdate

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You can reverse the sorting direction by omitting`-`:
shell
$ git branch --sort=committerdate

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It's good to know that we can make this behaviour as the default when listing branches:
shell
$ git config --global branch.sort -committerdate
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