I Found a 2-Year-Old GitHub Feature Request and Built It

Source: Dev.to

Background

A few weeks ago I was browsing GitHub Discussions and found a thread from September 2023. A developer named Nathan had posted asking for a proper branch‑cleanup tool—filter by last commit age, see who touched what, bulk delete stale branches.

The issue had been open for two years. The best official response was essentially “have you tried the Stale tab?”, which still requires you to delete one branch at a time.

The Stack Overflow question “How do I remove all stale branches from GitHub?” has 40 000 views. The most common workaround looks like this:

git push origin --delete branch-name-1
git push origin --delete branch-name-2
# repeat 40 more times

Or you write a script against the GitHub API, handle authentication, pagination, and hope you don’t accidentally nuke something active.

Solution

I already had reposweeper.com—a free tool for bulk repository management (archive, delete, visibility, collaborators)—which I built to address a similar GitHub limitation. Adding branch management felt like the obvious next step.

How it works

1. Select the repository you want to clean up.
2. Click Manage Branches.
3. Select the stale branches (branches are sorted by last commit date and show the author and commit message). Protected branches are flagged so they can’t be selected accidentally.
4. Click Delete to remove the selected branches in one shot.

You can try it at .

Follow‑up

I replied to Nathan’s original thread with a link to the new feature. Two years is a long time to wait for a feature.

If you have suggestions or run into anything weird, feel free to leave a comment.