Branches and Tags Overview
Tower's sidebar lists all of your project's local branches & tags as well as remote branches.
Selecting an item in the sidebar will show its commit history; selecting multiple will show a combined history of the selected items.
Tip: The "/" character in a branch's name can be used to simulate folders. This is a naming convention in Git and is respected in Tower, where such items are displayed as collapsible folders in the sidebar.
If you should not want this behavior, you can deactivate it in Tower's Preferences by unchecking the option "Group refs in sidebar".
Pin Branch
You can pin a branch by right-clicking it and selecting the "Pin Branch" option from the context menu.
Pinned branches appear in the "Pinned" section at the top of the sidebar, so your most important branches are always there when you need them!
Pinning comes with a few conveniences built in:
- You can select multiple branches and pin or unpin them all at once, saving you time when organizing a busy sidebar.
- Pinned branches are never automatically archived, even if they become stale or fully merged. Learn more about automatic branch management.
- Pins are stored in your repository's Git config, so they won't unexpectedly disappear or unpin themselves.
Filter Tags and Remote Branches
In repositories with hundreds of refs, you can keep the sidebar easy to scan by sorting and limiting the visible Tag and Remote Branch items. Click the gear icon in the sidebar's footer and open or , respectively.
From there, you can sort the items by name (ascending or descending) and choose to show only the newest 10, 15, 25, 50, 100, 250, or 500 entries — or all of them.
The same gear menu also collects other settings that control what the sidebar shows you, such as the reflog, the number of stashes, grouped refs, the "Fully Merged" badge, stale branch info, and where stacked branches are listed.
Automatic Branch Management
Tower can help you keep your sidebar organized by automatically detecting stale and fully merged branches. These branches receive special badges in the sidebar, and you can easily archive them to reduce clutter while preserving them for future reference. Learn more about automatic branch management.