After a few merged pull requests, local clones fill up with feature branches that no longer exist on origin. Git still has the local refs; the remote-tracking branch is what disappeared.

The Oh My Zsh git plugin already has aliases for this, but the README only dumps the pipelines. The names are gbg, gbgd, and gbgD. Enable the plugin with plugins=(... git) in ~/.zshrc.

What “gone” means

git branch -vv prints tracking info next to each local branch. After a prune, a branch whose upstream was deleted looks like [origin/feature-x: gone]. The aliases grep for that : gone] marker. LANG=C keeps the match working even if Git is localized.

They will not show up until you fetch with prune. gfa (git fetch --all --tags --prune) does that.

The three aliases

Typical flow:

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gfa     # prune stale remote-tracking refs
gbg     # inspect first
gbgd    # safe delete
gbgD    # force-delete what -d refused

A gbg line looks like this — branch name, tip commit, gone upstream, subject:

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  feature-login  a1b2c3d [origin/feature-login: gone] fix session timeout
  hotfix-retry   e4f5g6h [origin/hotfix-retry: gone] bump retry budget

When -d is not enough

gbgd uses git branch -d, which only deletes a branch Git considers fully merged into HEAD. Squash-merged PRs often fail that check: the remote is gone and the work is on the default branch, but the local commits are not ancestors of HEAD. Git then prints the branch is not fully merged and suggests git branch -D.

If you already inspected the gbg list and you do not need those leftover commits, gbgD is the force-delete alias.

When to use this

Use it when git branch is cluttered after remote cleanup — merged PRs, deleted topic branches, a teammate who pruned origin. List with gbg, prefer gbgd, reach for gbgD only when you know the work is already on the default branch (or you truly do not need it).

This is not the same as gbda, which deletes merged local branches whether or not the remote still exists. gbg* is specifically “upstream is gone.”