Is there a way to delete or hide old/renamed Workflows?

[ryanvanderpol]

I made a Workflow using the Node CI template and then later renamed it.  Now my Workflow list has “Node CI” in it, but that doesnt even exist anymore.  Is there some way for me to hide it?  Or is it there forever?

Screen Shot 2019-09-18 at 11.38.27 AM.png718×664 27.9 KB

[ethomson]

You can’t remove it yet, but it won’t be there forever.  You can’t delete it yet but we’ll have functionality to delete this in the future.

[wouterds]

Deleted +150 workflow runs manually, but it works 😂, thx

[piotrekkr]

For anyone searching for some automation script to do this cleanup. It is in github docs. They added example script instead of adding API/UI to do this

[shivam-inflection-io]

The script should be linked somewhere in the Actions page for better visibility.

[onelapahead]

That script only removes the logs of the workflow runs, not the runs themselves which is what's required for a workflow to be removed from the UI from what I have found.

See my separate answer below, https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/26256#discussioncomment-9425133, for how to automate the deletion of workflow runs. Hope @wouterds this saves you and others any more manual effort at least.

[piotrekkr]

@onelapahead For me this logs cleanup worked because I did this for very old workflow that were not in use any more and all runs were finished. To make it work with fresh workflows that are in use you will probably need:

• I remove workflow file from repository and push to default branch (this will "unregister" it from repository but not remove from list if there are logs)
• Ask all devs to refresh their pull request branches (needed only if workflow was a PR check, run on push and similar events)
• Probably wait a day or two for new workflow runs to stop showing up
• At this point there should not be any workflow runs that are not done
• Run clean logs script

After script is done you should not see this workflow in UI any more.

// EDIT

I tested this today. I had a workflow that was scheduled everyday but I don't need it any more. I created PR that was removing it from .github/workflows/ directory. After PR merge to main and going to Actions UI my scheduled workflow disappeared even tho it had logs. What is interesting is that direct links to workflow logs like https://github.com/{owner}/{repo}/actions/runs/9073104772/job/24929685674 are working and showing logs. So my guess it is just hiding it in UI and that's it. Not sure why this does not work with other workflows. Maybe old workflows are treated differently somehow or if they were renamed.

[sanewalt22]

Its been 3 months since this post?  Can I delete yet?   Its annoying that a typo leaves an action in the workflow

[luisfcolon]

It's not the best solution, depending on how many runs their are associated to the deleted workflow. A fix for me was to remove the workflow from git, and then delete all of the associated workflow runs. This removed the action from the list.

[dkirrane]

I've been waiting 2 years now. It's still there.

[DerekChia]

it is 2024, we still do not have ways to bulk delete old workflow runs

[andykimchris]

Still waiting on this 😢

[Long18]

Still waiting here 😭

[FabioLuporini]

Hi,

any updates on this issue/feature?

we have several spurious workflows here: https://github.com/devitocodes/devito/actions

and we’re really looking forward for some clean up …

Thanks!

[vfdev-5]

Any updates on that ?

[ggorman]

I got all excited when I saw this was marked as “solved/go to solution”. Then I found the solution was to wait as it would be fixed sometime in the future! We could close all our issues right now with the same message 😉

Seriously though, while we love actions and are creating/recreating lots of them, our actions page littered with orphaned action detritus. 

[Yarden-zamir]

You are completley correct. So correct infact that your answer should be marked as the solution

[JakaKokosar]

@ethomson wrote:

You can’t remove it yet, but it won’t be there forever.  You can’t delete it yet but we’ll have functionality to delete this in the future.

How is this solved? Any update on this? And what do you mean by won’t be there forever? They do.

[dan-rally]

Hi, with all due respect this doesn’t exactly “solve” the problem, is there any update or ETA on this please? Thanks

[shinebayar-g]

We really need this feature… Wanna get rid of those old experimental workflows.

[FabioLuporini]

Hi, any ETA on this?

Thanks!

[molszanski]

Has anyone figured a way to clean them?

[blakethepatton]

Also looking forward to seeing this. 

[chuckatkins]

@jakakokosar wrote:

How is this solved?

“solved” = “won’t fix” it seems.

[marksoccar]

Hey Guys, i see that many have asked this me also was going to ask, but i found a work around.
you can simply go to your repo home_folder/.github/workflows, Then delete the workflow that you wish to remove and commit 😉

[karthick-core]

This is not working. I deleted the workflow but still actions has all history of workflow executions. Currently there is no way to get rid of this.

[marksoccar]

I tried this myself, make sure you push to github repo after you delete files related to workflow.

[dslatkin]

I'm not sure if this change came out today or earlier, but looks like a lot of my old, messy workflows have disappeared from the Actions tab on the repo I manage. 🥳 This is more or less what mine looks like now:

Previously there were dozens of workflows and a "see more" (or similar) link at the bottom of the list.

[aakrem]

Hi @ethomson, any updates regarding this issue ?
The only way to "delete" the workflow is to delete all the runs.
If we have many it's gonna be hard!

[james-garriss]

Just a +1 to say I would like to see this issue resolved. Thanks.

[dmitrym0]

I've got a workaround.

Like someone mentioned, once all runs go away the workflow goes away. So here's a way to automate removal all of the runs using gh tool:

gh run list --workflow=stale-workflow.yml --json databaseId | jq '.[].databaseId' | xargs -I{} gh run delete {}

[burnettk]

Combining @dmitrym0 comment with the limit 500 in @maximbaz comment (because the default limit is smaller). Make sure you cd into the repo in question, and make sure you swap out stale-workflow.yml with the name of your actual deprecated workflow file. gh is the github cli.

gh run list --limit 500 --workflow=stale-workflow.yml --json databaseId | jq '.[].databaseId' | xargs -I{} gh run delete {}

[theofficialgman]

I have a unique issue that is related. Our repo has no workflow runs of a now renamed (added .disabled to the end of the filename) workflow. Yet it still shows up in the list.

https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps/actions/workflows/update_apps_raspbian_addons.yml

running gh run list --limit 500 --workflow=update_apps_raspbian_addons.yml --json databaseId produces empty output as expected.

So for me there is no workaround available for getting this workflow to not show up.

[juliandreas]

The fact that this is a 5 year old issue is WILD 💀

[dmitrym0]

I have a unique issue that is related. Our repo has no workflow runs of a now renamed (added .disabled to the end of the filename) workflow. Yet it still shows up in the list.

https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps/actions/workflows/update_apps_raspbian_addons.yml

running gh run list --limit 500 --workflow=update_apps_raspbian_addons.yml --json databaseId produces empty output as expected.

So for me there is no workaround available for getting this workflow to not show up.

If you really hate seeing hang around, try bringing it back and add a dummy run (something like echo 'test' or something). Then delete that run and see if the workflow goes away?

[theofficialgman]

I was able to remove it by first, re-enabling (removing .disabled from the name), running the workflow, and then removing the workflow_dispatch trigger from the workflow. Afterwords I could then disable it again (add .disabled) and it stays gone.

[kondei]

I really want to delete old actions.

[stan-stately]

would love to see this

[MadDeveloper]

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/26256#discussioncomment-7295831

[Long18]

I think you can do as follows.

First, you create a new script, here I name it delete.yml (.github/workflows/delete.yml)

name: Remove Expired Workflow Runs
on:
  schedule: [{ cron: "30 1 * * *" }] # Schedule to run the workflow every day at 1:30 AM
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  clean:
    name: Delete Expired Workflow Runs
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Action Code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Run Delete Script
        # run: sh ./delete.sh (your org or github name) (your repo name)
        run: sh ./delete.sh Long18 github-test-action
        working-directory: .github/actions
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Next, I have a new script, I name it delete.sh (.github/actions/delete.sh)

#!/bin/bash

org="$1"
repo="$2"

echo "Deleting workflow runs for $org/$repo"

workflows_temp=$(mktemp) # Creates a temporary file to store workflow data.

gh api repos/$org/$repo/actions/workflows | jq -r '.workflows[] | [.id, .path] | @tsv' > $workflows_temp # Lookup workflow
cat "$workflows_temp" 

workflows_names=$(awk '{print $2}' $workflows_temp | grep -v "main")

if [ -z "$workflows_names" ]; then

    echo "All workflows are either successful or failed. Nothing to remove"

else

    echo "Removing all the workflows that are not successful or failed"

    for workflow_name in $workflows_names; do

        workflow_filename=$(basename "$workflow_name")
        echo "Deleting |$workflow_filename|, please wait..."

        gh run list --limit 500 --workflow $workflow_filename --json databaseId |
            jq -r '.[] | .databaseId' |
            xargs -I{} gh run delete {} # Delete all workflow runs for workflow name
    done
fi

rm -rf $workflows_temp

echo "Done."

That's it, you're done. Good luck!

[piotrekkr]

They've added a script in docs for this instead of giving people UI / API to do just this.

[pcornelissen]

Yes, but with the script you end up in rate limiting when you have many workflow runs

[piotrekkr]

Yes it is true. Although there is this sleep there :D

  # Sleep for 100ms to avoid rate limiting
  sleep 0.1

I'm working with github for more than 3 years now and I think there is a huge problem with project management at GitHub. There is almost nothing delivered that brings value to users. People are asking for basic and obvious features that should be implemented long ago and they are not implemented for years. There is a lot of weird design decisions that do not make much sense. Docs are unclear and lacking examples, UX is quite bad imho (I'm using refined github extension to make up for it). Not sure why this is the case, but Microsoft has tons of money and should be able to hire some competent people to improve.

[ofennell-quipex]

How is there not a proper solution for this yet

[Justin-JHG]

not sure this would work for everyone but it worked for me:

create an archived folder and move the workflow files to that folder on the default (e.g. main/master) branch of your repo

[onelapahead]

For my use case, I wanted to remove a Workflow entirely from the Actions UI. Removing workflows from the main branch of my repository was not sufficient, nor was deleting the logs of the workflows' runs (what is documented by GitHub here: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/monitoring-and-troubleshooting-workflows/using-workflow-run-logs#deleting-logs-programmatically).

So modeled after GitHub's logs script, and using wisdom from https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/26256#discussioncomment-8756475 I have this script that deletes all the runs from a workflow, and therefore will remove from it the UI once it completes:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Delete all the runs for a given workflow
# Usage: delete-runs.sh <repository> <workflow-name>

set -oe pipefail

REPOSITORY=$1
WORKFLOW_NAME=$2

# Validate arguments
if [[ -z "$REPOSITORY" ]]; then
  echo "Repository is required"
  exit 1
fi

if [[ -z "$WORKFLOW_NAME" ]]; then
  echo "Workflow name is required"
  exit 1
fi

echo "Getting all completed runs for workflow $WORKFLOW_NAME in $REPOSITORY"

RUNS=$(
  gh api \
    -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
    -H "X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28" \
    "/repos/$REPOSITORY/actions/workflows/$WORKFLOW_NAME/runs" \
    --paginate \
    --jq '.workflow_runs[] | select(.conclusion != "") | .id'
)

echo "Found $(echo "$RUNS" | wc -l) completed runs for workflow $WORKFLOW_NAME"

for RUN in $RUNS; do
  gh run delete --repo $REPOSITORY $RUN || echo "Failed to delete run $RUN"
  sleep 0.1
done

I'll edit the script if I find for workflows that had non-completed runs if it doesn't finish cleaning them up.

Hope this helps folks! GitHub please make this possible via the UI soon. It's a bit absurd its taken five years to prioritize creating a UI button and an API that in the backend just has to do the above 🤷🏻.