How can I remote prune origin in SourceTree?

[Dana Luther]

Using the command line, I can

git remote prune origin

to bring the list of remote branches up to date with the remote. I cannot find any way to do this in SourceTree. The branches have already been deleted from BitBucket by another user of the repo, but I have the legacy refs on my local repository.

If I right click on each one I can delete it (thought it warns that it will be deleting it from the remote) and that's not what I'm looking for, though it may achieve the same result in the end ...

[stevestreeting · Accepted solution]

You should be able to achieve this by using the 'Fetch' button on the toolbar and checking the 'Prune tracking branches no longer on the remote(s)' option.

[Dana Luther]

Perfect! Thank you. The option dialog isn't there when you use the right click 'Fetch from origin', only when you use the top menu option.

[Jeremy Johnson]

Thanks, Dana--wouldn't have known that if you hadn't mentioned it.

[Lawrence Dol]

Why the heck is this not automatic; if it's gone from original ST should show it as gone from origin? Is there any use-case where this is not the desired behavior?

[Andreas Beer]

This app is missing a lot of user centric design. I always have to do all the mindless steps, just because there might be a weird edge case for someone who might not want to have it.

[Vincenzo Vitale]

I'm using Version 1.8.1 (1.8.1) in MacOSX and this doesn't work. The local stale tracking branches are not removed.

Is this a known issue?

[Reza]

Hi Guys its 2 years or so and I still can't prune local branches which have been merged and deleted from Master

[Graham Mueller]

Reza, it sounds like you might want something different. Are you hoping to have actual local branches removed, or do you just mean that you're seeing remote branches that should be deleted? I wouldn't expect anything to happen to local branches unless you explicitly tried to delete them. 

[Reza]

Hi Graham,

I want the branches that have been merged into Master to be removed locally. Currently I have to figure out which ones were merged and delete them manually. 

[Graham Mueller]

I don't think it's likely that you'd ever see SourceTree work that way, as it's contrary to how Git itself is intended to work. Your local copy is intended to be exactly that -- local, unaffected by remote changes. You shouldn't have local copies of branches unless you specifically check them out, though, so you wouldn't need to delete anything that you hadn't interacted with.

You could potentially write some sort of script to delete local branches that don't have remote counterparts, but this seems like it'd be extremely dangerous and cause things like accidentally deleting local work that you hadn't yet pushed. Something less invasive might just be a script to identify which branches don't have remotes, and you could actually do that via SourceTree by clicking push -- this brings up a little window showing which remotes to push to, it should be apparent which ones are missing remotes and are therefore deletable (shown below).

I would advocate hugely against SourceTree doing anything to manipulate local branches based on remote status, though. That would only cause more trouble.

[jamesjohnryan]

Still a bug - would be nice if the client could do the same as `git remote prune origin` does on the CLI.

[graham_mueller]

Hi guys, this still seems to be an issue a year later. Fetch does not prune removed remotes, this seems like a bug. Is there a corresponding issue in the Atlassian Jira?

[mark-deltasource]

Works on Mac (OS X Yosemite 10.10.3) and SourceTree (2.0.5.2) through the top level menu (Repository -> Fetch).

[Deleted user]

Hi Vincenzo, You're not alone, have the same problem here (using Gitlab). Here's another topic with the same problem.