Tower 13 for Windows (Beta) — Branch Pinning & Automatic Branch Management

We know that managing a growing number of branches can be a real headache, distracting you from your main task: committing great code. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by a cluttered sidebar full of old, merged, or long-forgotten branches, this release is for you!

Tower 13 for Windows addresses this problem in two ways:

• On one side, you can pin the branches you care about most, so they're always within reach.
• On the other, Tower takes the burden of branch hygiene off your shoulders by helping you archive the branches that have become stale or have already been merged — automatically or manually.

Together, they go a long way toward keeping your repository organized 😎

Both features already made their debut on the Mac — Branch Pinning in Tower 8 for Mac and Automatic Branch Management in Tower 15 for Mac — and we're thrilled to bring them to Windows.

Let's dive into what's new!

Branch Pinning

Let's start with the branches you never want to lose track of.

When right-clicking a branch, you'll now find the option to pin it. Pinned branches appear in a dedicated "Pinned" section at the top of the sidebar, so your most important branches are always there when you need them.

We designed this feature with quite a few conveniences in mind:

• You can pin and unpin multiple branches at once, saving you time.
• Pinned branches are never automatically archived (more on that below).
• Pinned branches are stored in the Git config, so they won't unexpectedly unpin.

New "Fully Merged" and "Stale" Badges

Now, on to the branches you'd rather not see anymore.

The first thing you'll likely notice after updating Tower is a new set of badges in the "Branches" section of the sidebar.

You'll see new badges next to branches, indicating whether a branch is "Fully Merged" or how long it's been since it became "Stale" (meaning it hasn't seen any activity for a while).

A branch is considered "Fully Merged" when two conditions are met:

1. All of its commits have been integrated into its parent branch.
2. The branch was tracking a remote branch that has since been deleted on the remote.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it's exactly what happens after a Pull Request is merged: the feature branch gets merged into the base branch and deleted on the remote, leaving your local copy behind. After your next fetch, Tower will spot these leftover branches and badge them accordingly.

These badges are complemented by a helpful hint view that appears when you select a fully merged or stale branch. This view gives you a quick, one-click option to delete the branch, making cleanup a breeze!

Automatic Branch Management

While deleting a stale or fully merged branch is often a good choice, sometimes all you want is to hide a branch from sight.

This is now possible with Tower 13 for Windows. You'll notice a new "Archived Branches" view where you can:

• Add any branch to this section via the context menu.
• Drag and drop any branch into this section.

You can do this manually (you can even select multiple branches at once!) or let Tower identify and handle them for you automatically.

If you go the automatic route, you can click the notification number in the footer to prompt the "Archive Branches" dialog, as shown below:

In the footer, next to the notification number, you will also find a gears icon that allows you to set the interval defining when a branch becomes stale, along with other options.

At any time, you can move a branch from the "Archived Branches" view back to the main "Branches" view by right-clicking it and selecting the "Unarchive [BRANCH]" option.

We've also added a "Skips Auto-Archiving" flag that lets you keep a branch and prevents it from being automatically archived.

The same is true for any branch you've pinned — so your favorites are always safe.

Other Improvements and Fixes

This release also ships a handy new addition: untracked files now show their contents directly in the diff view — text, binary, and image files alike.

As it's usually the case with every release, we took some time to implement improvements across the board. Here are a few examples:

• Runtime: Tower has been updated to .NET 10.
• History: Branch selection stays more responsive while commit history loads.
• Diff View: Long diffs now keep text clear of the overlay scrollbar, so wrapped lines remain readable.
• Sidebar: Branch view settings such as grouping refs and stacking branches now live in the sidebar gear menu, where they are easier to find while working with branches.

We also fixed the following issues:

• Diff View: The "Collapse All" button now collapses every file in large commits.
• Repositories: Fixed a crash when opening a freshly initialized empty repository.
• Submodules: Fixed tag checkout and folder-picker handling in submodule workflows.
• Working Copy: Fixed an issue where large diffs could be truncated on first load until the window was resized.
• History: Compare Branches now handles detached HEAD correctly instead of building an invalid revision range.
• Branches: Undoing a branch rename now refreshes the sidebar correctly, and multi-branch delete undo now reports restore failures instead of silently losing errors.
• Tags: Multi-tag delete undo now restores all tags and reports restore failures when they occur, and incorrect context menu items for multi-tag selections have been fixed.

We hope you enjoy Tower 13 for Windows! Happy committing! 😊

Not a Tower user yet? Download our 30-day free trial and experience a better way to work with Git!

PS: Did you know? Tower Pro is now free for students as well as teachers and educational institutions!