Deleting all artifacts from a GitHub repository

Recently after playing around with workflows and running a LOT of them, GitHub told me I'd run out of space and couldn't create any more artifacts, so my workflows wouldn't run.

Prerequisites

• Create a Personal Access Token in GitHub (PAT)
  • Click on your logo in the top right => Developer Settings => Personal access tokens => Tokens => Generate new token
  • Name your token DELETE_ARTIFACTS_TOKEN
  • You don't need to give your token any permissions

Delete Artifacts

Add the delete-artifacts.yml file below to the .github/workflows folder of your project.

When you run it manually from GitHub, navigate into the workflow run then into the job details, and follow the instructions to authenticate with GitHub CLI. You should be seeing something like this:

delete-artifacts.yml

name: delete artifacts

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  delete-artifacts:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      # Checkout the repository (required for GitHub CLI actions)
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      # Install GitHub CLI
      - name: Install GitHub CLI
        run: |
          sudo apt-get update
          sudo apt-get install -y gh

      # Authenticate GitHub CLI
      - name: Authenticate with GitHub CLI
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.DELETE_ARTIFACTS_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          echo "${GH_TOKEN}" | gh auth login --with-token

      # Delete all artifacts
      - name: Delete All Artifacts
        env:
          REPO: ${{ github.repository }}
        run: |
          echo "Fetching artifacts for repository $REPO..."
          gh api -X GET "repos/$REPO/actions/artifacts" --paginate \
            | jq -r '.artifacts[] | .id' \
            | while read -r artifact_id; do
                echo "Deleting artifact $artifact_id..."
                gh api -X DELETE "repos/$REPO/actions/artifacts/$artifact_id"
              done