Delete container images from the Container Registry (FREE)
You can delete container images from your Container Registry.
WARNING: Deleting container images is a destructive action and can't be undone. To restore a deleted container image, you must rebuild and re-upload it.
Deleting a container image on self-managed instances doesn't free up storage space, it only marks the image as eligible for deletion. To actually delete unreferenced container images and recover storage space, administrators must run garbage collection.
On GitLab.com, the latest version of the Container Registry includes an automatic online garbage collector. For more information, see this blog post. The automatic online garbage collector is an instance-wide feature, rolling out gradually to a subset of the user base. Some new container image repositories created from GitLab 14.5 onward are served by this new version of the Container Registry. In this new version of the Container Registry, layers that aren't referenced by any image manifest, and image manifests that have no tags and aren't referenced by another manifest (such as multi-architecture images), are automatically scheduled for deletion after 24 hours if left unreferenced.
Use the GitLab UI
To delete container images using the GitLab UI:
-
On the top bar, select Main menu, and:
- For a project, select Projects and find your project.
- For a group, select Groups and find your group.
-
On the left sidebar, select Packages and registries > Container Registry.
-
From the Container Registry page, you can select what you want to delete, by either:
- Deleting the entire repository, and all the tags it contains, by selecting the red {remove} Trash icon.
- Navigating to the repository, and deleting tags individually or in bulk by selecting the red {remove} Trash icon next to the tag you want to delete.
-
In the dialog box, select Remove tag.
Use the GitLab API
You can use the API to automate the process of deleting container images. For more information, see the following endpoints:
- Delete a Registry repository
- Delete an individual Registry repository tag
- Delete Registry repository tags in bulk
Use GitLab CI/CD
NOTE: GitLab CI/CD doesn't provide a built-in way to remove your container images. This example uses a third-party tool called reg that talks to the GitLab Registry API. For assistance with this third-party tool, see the issue queue for reg.
The following example defines two stages: build
, and clean
. The build_image
job builds a container
image for the branch, and the delete_image
job deletes it. The reg
executable is downloaded and used to
remove the container image matching the $CI_PROJECT_PATH:$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG
predefined CI/CD variable.
To use this example, change the IMAGE_TAG
variable to match your needs.
stages:
- build
- clean
build_image:
image: docker:20.10.16
stage: build
services:
- docker:20.10.16-dind
variables:
IMAGE_TAG: $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE:$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG
script:
- docker login -u $CI_REGISTRY_USER -p $CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD $CI_REGISTRY
- docker build -t $IMAGE_TAG .
- docker push $IMAGE_TAG
only:
- branches
except:
- main
delete_image:
before_script:
- curl --fail --show-error --location "https://github.com/genuinetools/reg/releases/download/v$REG_VERSION/reg-linux-amd64" --output ./reg
- echo "$REG_SHA256 ./reg" | sha256sum -c -
- chmod a+x ./reg
image: curlimages/curl:7.86.0
script:
- ./reg rm -d --auth-url $CI_REGISTRY -u $CI_REGISTRY_USER -p $CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD $IMAGE_TAG
stage: clean
variables:
IMAGE_TAG: $CI_PROJECT_PATH:$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG
REG_SHA256: ade837fc5224acd8c34732bf54a94f579b47851cc6a7fd5899a98386b782e228
REG_VERSION: 0.16.1
only:
- branches
except:
- main
NOTE:
You can download the latest reg
release from the releases page, then update
the code example by changing the REG_SHA256
and REG_VERSION
variables defined in the delete_image
job.
Use a cleanup policy
You can create a per-project cleanup policy to ensure older tags and images are regularly removed from the Container Registry.