git recent

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

git-recent-2-0-demo.webm

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 (Coming soon! Updated for 2.0)

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.

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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

You can download/clone and add the git-recent directory to your path (e.g. add the directory to your PATH environment or copy git-recent-og script into an existing included path like /usr/local/bin or ~/bin/).

You can use also npm to install the global binary:

npm install --global git-recent

On Mac, you can install with homebrew:

brew install git-recent

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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