Name of current branch

To get the name of the current branch, we can use git rev-parse:

git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD

This will print the name of the current branch as long as we have one checked out. If we're in a detached HEAD state, it will print HEAD.

Since version 2.22, git branch has a --show-current option. It will give us the name of the current branch, but intead will print nothing if we're in a detached HEAD state.

git branch --show-current

Source: man git-rev-parse, man git-branch