How can I refresh the list of remote branches in my Visual Studio 2017 Team Explorer panel?

Question

How can I refresh the list of remote branches in my Visual Studio Team Explorer panel?

In the Visual Studio 2017 Team Explorer, Branches panel, I could see the 10 or so branches in our VSTS instance.

Then in Chrome, I deleted some of the older branches and created a new branch.

Switched back to VS 2017, but the list of remotes/origin branches still shows the old list, and I can't find anyway to refresh it.

I tried changing to a different repo, the F5 Refresh on the Team Explorer header, I even closed and reopened VS 2017... but nothing refreshes the list to match what VSTS portal shows.

Answer 1

If you want Visual Studio 2017 to ALWAYS prune on fetch (I do, I add and remove a LOT of branches for UI work), once you install 3rd party Git (can do from Settings within Team Explorer, Git section) there will be a new option in Global Settings (also in Git section) to 'Prune remote branches during fetch' which you can set to True. I did not have this option before updating my VS to 15.5 (I was on 15.0).

Answer 2

You can Fetch in Visual Studio Team Explorer.

View => Team Explorer