git bstatus is like git status for your branches:

$ git bstatus
On branch librpm-compat
Recently active branches:
  (use "git bstatus -a" to list all branches)
  (use "git bstatus -v" to list commits)

   * librpm-compat   1 day +1 build: Tweak rpm version check for HAVE_NEW_RPM_VERIFY
     master          1 day +0 (upstream/master) app: Add support for passing URLs to RPMs
     install-url    2 days +2 fixup! app: Add support for passing URLs to RPMs
     reuse-rpmdb    2 days +1 upgrader: Reuse existing rpmdb checkout if available
     rust-goop      2 days +2 fixup! build: Fix building rust in debug mode

There are 53 local branches (6 merged, 47 unmerged).
  (use "git bstatus -m" or "git bstatus -u" to list them)

(Though I alias it to git lsb for faster typing).

The main difference from git branch is that it's designed to be friendlier to humans, in the way git status is:

• quick view of your recently active branches to make finding and switching between them a breeze
• column for human-formatted relative timestamp
• column for number of commits on that branch
• list added commits across branches with -v
• list only (un)merged branches with -m/-u

You may find that something like git branch -v --sort=-committerdate | head -n5 is good enough for your purposes. In git bstatus, -v lists all the commits that aren't merged into master (or the tracked branch, if any):

$ git lsb -v
* librpm-compat   1 day +1
    e98a5941 build: Tweak rpm version check for HAVE_NEW_RPM_VERIFY
    04c0678f app: Add support for passing URLs to RPMs
  master          1 day +0 (upstream/master)
    04c0678f app: Add support for passing URLs to RPMs
  install-url    2 days +2
    2391b6d3 fixup! app: Add support for passing URLs to RPMs
    7f7b54b2 app: Add support for passing URLs to RPMs
    6a274b83 build-sys: Hard require Rust
  reuse-rpmdb    2 days +1
    eddafb00 upgrader: Reuse existing rpmdb checkout if available
    6a274b83 build-sys: Hard require Rust
  rust-goop      2 days +2
    c7a1d9f8 fixup! build: Fix building rust in debug mode
    f393131c build: Fix building rust in debug mode
    6a274b83 build-sys: Hard require Rust

In the above output, +2 means that there are two commits on that branch; the last commit listed is the first one that is shared with the master branch.

Installation

$ cargo install --path .
$ which git-bstatus
~/.cargo/bin/git-bstatus

To uninstall:

$ cargo uninstall git-bstatus