Delete GitHub workflow runs using the gh cli¶

Finding the workflow runs by ID¶

You can use the gh command line interface to list the workflow runs by ID:

gh run list --json databaseId -q '.[].databaseId'

Workflow runs by ID for a specific workflow¶

You can also filter the workflow runs to a specific workflow using the -w myworkflow.yml, which would only list the workflow runs for the .github/workflows/myworkflow.yml workflow:

gh run list --json databaseId -w myworkflow.yml -q '.[].databaseId'

Using bash or zsh¶

From https://blog.oddbit.com/post/2022-09-22-delete-workflow-runs/

Hello, future me. This is for you next time you want to do this.

When setting up the CI for a project I will sometimes end up with a tremendous clutter of workflow runs. Sometimes they have embarrassing mistakes. Who wants to show that to people? I was trying to figure out how to bulk delete workflow runs from the CLI, and I came up with something that works:

gh run list --json databaseId -q '.[].databaseId' |
  xargs -IID gh api \
    "repos/$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner)/actions/runs/ID" \
    -X DELETE

This will delete all (well, up to 20, or whatever you set in --limit) your workflow runs. You can add flags to gh run list to filter runs by workflow or by triggering user.

Using PowerShell¶

The same command as above, but in PowerShell

gh run list --json databaseId -q '.[].databaseId' | ForEach-Object { gh api "repos/$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner)/actions/runs/$_" -X DELETE }