Tidying up after Pull Requests
At GitHub, we love to use Pull Requests all day, every day. The only trouble is that we end up with a lot of defunct branches after Pull Requests have…
At GitHub, we love to use Pull Requests all day, every day. The only trouble is that we end up with a lot of defunct branches after Pull Requests have been merged or closed. From time to time, one of us would clear out these branches with a script, but we thought it would be better to take care of this step as part of our regular workflow on GitHub.com.
Starting today, after a Pull Request has been merged, you’ll see a button to delete the lingering branch:
If the Pull Request was closed without being merged, the button will look a little different to warn you about deleting unmerged commits:
Of course, you can only delete branches in repositories that you have push access to.
Enjoy your tidy repositories!
Written by
Related posts

Explore the best of GitHub Universe: 9 spaces built to spark creativity, connection, and joy
See what’s happening at Universe 2025, from experimental dev tools and career coaching to community-powered spaces. Save $400 on your pass with Early Bird pricing.

Agents panel: Launch Copilot coding agent tasks anywhere on GitHub
Delegate coding tasks to Copilot and track progress wherever you are on GitHub. Copilot works in the background, creates a pull request, and tags you for review when finished.

Q1 2025 Innovation Graph update: Bar chart races, data visualization on the rise, and key research
Discover the latest trends and insights on public software development activity on GitHub with the quarterly release of data for the Innovation Graph, updated through March 2025.