paulirish/git-recent

git recent

Speedily browse your latest local git branches, checkout with Enter. Also view branches unique commits, and optionally the diff against main.

Demo video of git recent 2.0

git recent now offers an interactive UI (thx to fzf) for browsing recent branches, seeing differences, and checkout'ing your selection.

See a diff of your branch vs main with ctrl-o. If you have delta it'll use that for formatting, but will fallback, too.

If you're like me, mostly using classic git commands, then git recent provides a nice upgrade for browsing/selecting recent branches. But if you're a TUI fan using git-fuzzy, lazygit or tig or fzf-git, well… this probably isn't an upgrade. :p (But you can certainly read the source quickly!)

Installation

fzf is required for 2.0. TBH, it's a fantastic tool; those shell key bindings are delightful. That said, if you're dependency-averse, the older version below, git recent-og, may be for you.

• Mac: brew install fzf
• Linux: sudo apt-get install fzf
• Windows: choco install fzf

Then, do one of these:

• Manual: Grab the git-recent script from this repo and put it anywhere in your $PATH. Run chmod +x git-recent.
• Via NPM: npm install --global git-recent
• Homebrew: brew install git-recent

Usage

git recent

Hit Enter to checkout the selected branch.

Type or use arrow keys to navigate your list of branches.

Hit ctrl-o to see the branch diff.

Worktree Support

If a branch is already open in a separate git worktree, git recent will detect it and provide instructions to cd there. To enable automatic directory switching, add one of these wrapper functions to your shell config:

Bash / Zsh (in .bashrc or .zshrc)

recent() {
  local o=$(command git-recent "$@")
  [ -d "$o" ] && cd "$o" || [ -n "$o" ] && echo "$o"
}

Fish (in ~/.config/fish/config.fish)

function recent
  set -l o (command git-recent $argv)
  if test -d "$o"
    cd $o
  else if test -n "$o"
    echo $o
  end
end

git recent-og

git recent-og is the OG git recent, released back in 2016. Now it's been renamed to git recent-og.

git recent-og

Optionally, add -n<int> to see the most recent <n> branches

git recent-og -n5

If you're a Windows user, you need to use Git Bash or similar shell in order to effectively use this utility.

Installation

Install with npm or brew as above, or copy git-recent-og script into an existing path like /usr/local/bin or ~/bin/.

If you like this you may also be interested in...

• git open - Open the repo website in your browser
• diff-so-fancy - Making the output of git diff so fancy

License

Copyright Paul Irish. Licensed under MIT.

Changelog

• 2025-02 - 2.0 upgrade with fzf integration. 1.0 binary is now available as git recent-og.
• 2019-06 - Last bugfix for 1.0 landed. Been stable since then.
• 2018-10 - Added count -n parameter
• 2016-08 - released in standalone repo and published to npm
• 2016-05 - added to paulirish/dotfiles