Git branch command behaves like 'less'

When I use the git branch command to list all branches, I see the output of git branch | less.

The command git branch is supposed to show a list of branches, like ls does for files.

This is the output I get:

How do I get the default behaviour of git branch? What causes the paged output?

I am using ZSH with oh_my_zsh (nothing for Git in there), and my .gitconfig looks like this:

[user]
  email = [email protected]
  name = Dennis Haegler
[push]
  default = simple
[merge]
   tool = vimdiff
[core]
  editor = nvim
  excludesfile = /Users/dennish/.gitignore_global
[color]
  ui = true
[alias]
  br = branch
  ci = commit -v
  cam = commit -am
  co = checkout
  df = diff
  st = status
  sa = stash
  mt = mergetool
  cp = cherry-pick
  pl = pull --rebase
[difftool "sourcetree"]
  cmd = opendiff \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
[mergetool "sourcetree"]
  cmd = /Applications/SourceTree.app/Contents/Resources/opendiff-w.sh 
  \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" -ancestor \"$BASE\" -merge \"$MERGED\"
  trustExitCode = true

As mentioned in comments to Mark Adelsberger's answer, this was a default behavior change introduced in Git 2.16.

You can turn paged output for git branch back off by default with the pager.branch config setting:

git config --global pager.branch false

As other answers pointed out, Git defaults to piping itself into a pager (less by default) for most commands.

An important point, though, is that when the LESS environment variable is unset, Git sets it to FRX, and the consequence is that the user-visible behavior is the same as if the pager was not used when the command's output is short (i.e. if you have only few branches). See man less:

-F or --quit-if-one-screen
Causes less to automatically exit if the entire file can be displayed on the first screen.

-R or --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS
[...]ANSI "color" escape sequences are output in "raw" form.

-X or --no-init
Disables sending the termcap initialization and deinitialization strings to the terminal. This is sometimes desirable if the deinitialization string does something unnecessary, like clearing the screen.

If you get the behavior you describe, you most likely have $LESS set to something else, and unsetting it (unset LESS) would get rid of the issue while keeping the "pager" behavior for long output. Alternatively, you can activate the behavior for while keeping $LESS as-is by adding this to your .gitconfig file:

[core]
    pager = less -FRX

If you really dislike the pager thing, you can deactivate it globally or on a per-command basis (see other answers).

Not to argue semantics, but the behavior you're getting is the default. That's why you get it when you don't ask for something different. By default, branch (and numerous other Git commands) use a pager when sending output to the terminal.

You can override this default by using the --no-pager option:

git --no-pager branch

Or if you redirect the output to a file, Git should detect that it isn't writing to a terminal and so should not use a pager anyway. (On the other hand, that suggests a scripting use case, in which case you should consider using a plumbing command like git for-each-ref in preference to git branch.)

The accepted answer seems wrong. There are two problems:

1. The behaviour is actually different between (default configured) bash and zsh. The ‘problem’ shows up only under zsh.
2. The suggested solution will make git branch not use a pager always, which will not be desired when there is a lot of output.

The real reason is that bash and zsh have different default definitions about LESS: bash defines nothing, while zsh defines it to -R. When I do unset LESS in zsh, everything goes back to normal....

The -R behaviour may still be desired. In that case, you can add the following instruction to your .zshrc to keep everything working:

export LESS=-FRX

-F ‘causes less to automatically exit if the entire file can be displayed on the first screen’. However, -X needs to be specified simultaneously, otherwise no output will be shown when there is less than a screenful of output.