When you have a lot of git branches, the output of git branch -a will be shown in the “less” program.

The first “x” branches are shown and at the bottom the pager cursor will be shown:

Now when you press “q”, the less program will quit and you will be returned to the command prompt.

Pressing “h” will show help.

Pressing “arrow down” will scroll one row.

Pressing “page down” will scroll a screen.

When you reach the end of the output, the text “END” will be shown:

Press “q” to return to the command prompt

See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9483757/how-to-exit-git-log-or-git-diff