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Delete container images from the container registry

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You can delete container images from your container registry.

To automatically delete container images based on specific criteria, use garbage collection. Alternatively, you can use a 3rd-party tool to create a CI/CD job for deleting container images from specific projects.

To delete specific container images from a project or group, you can use the GitLab UI or GitLab API.

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.

Garbage collection

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, self-managed instance administrators must run garbage collection.

The container registry on GitLab.com includes an automatic online garbage collector. With the automatic garbage collector, the following are automatically scheduled for deletion in 24 hours if left unreferenced:

  • Layers that aren't referenced by any image manifest.
  • Image manifests that have no tags and aren't referenced by another manifest (like multi-architecture images).

The online garbage collector is an instance-wide feature, and applies to all namespaces.

Use the GitLab UI

To delete container images using the GitLab UI:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project or group.

  2. For:

    • A group, select Operate > Container Registry.
    • A project, select Deploy > Container Registry.

  3. 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.

  4. On the dialog, 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:

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 regctl that talks to the GitLab Registry API. For assistance with this third-party tool, see the issue queue for regclient.

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
  rules:
      - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
        when: never
      - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH

delete_image:
  stage: clean
  variables:
    IMAGE_TAG: $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE:$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG
    REGCTL_VERSION: v0.6.1
  rules:
      - if: $CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME != $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
  image: alpine:latest
  script:
    - apk update
    - apk add curl
    - curl --fail-with-body --location "https://github.com/regclient/regclient/releases/download/${REGCTL_VERSION}/regctl-linux-amd64" > /usr/bin/regctl
    - chmod 755 /usr/bin/regctl
    - regctl registry login ${CI_REGISTRY} -u ${CI_REGISTRY_USER} -p ${CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD}
    - regctl tag rm $IMAGE

NOTE: You can download the latest regctl release from the releases page, then update the code example by changing the REGCTL_VERSION variable 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.