Tracking a Branch

In general, branches have nothing to do with each other. However, a local branch can be set up to "track" a remote branch. This is very useful in two ways:

(A) Commits Ahead / Behind

If a tracking connection exists, Git can inform you if one branch contains new commits that the other one doesn't have:

If your local branch contains commits that haven't been published / pushed to the remote repository, your local branch is "ahead" of its remote counterpart branch by some commits.
If your teammates, on their part, have uploaded commits to the remote, the remote branch will have commits that you haven't downloaded / pulled to your local branch, yet. Your local branch is then "behind" its remote counterpart branch.

In the sidebar, Tower visualizes this by placing a little badge next to the local branch. Simply keep the mouse pointer over the badge to see a tooltip with more information.

(B) Default Target for Push & Pull

By default, Git's Push and Pull commands expect us to provide a couple of information:

which remote repository we want to push to / pull from
which remote branch on that repository we want to push to / pull from

However, with a tracking connection set up, something like a "remote counterpart" branch exists for our local branch. In that case, Git already knows where to push to / pull from - and Tower can automatically suggest the correct branch & remote in the corresponding dialogs. This means you will hardly have to make any adjustments when pushing / pulling in Tower and can instead simply confirm these dialogs in most cases.

If a branch is only behind it's remote, you can right-click it to fast-forward and get all the changes without checking it out before.

Track a Branch in Tower

In all dialogs that create new branches (be it local or remote ones), Tower offers you to create a tracking connection between the local and remote branch.

In case you want to explicitly create or change a tracking connection for an already existing branch, you can do so by right-clicking the branch in the sidebar:

if you clicked a local branch, you can select which branch it shall track or even remove the tracking
if you clicked a remote branch, the Track <clicked branch>… option will create a new local branch that automatically tracks the clicked remote branch.

Read more about tracking connections in our learn section.