Using conditions to control job execution

Overview

You can use the jobs.<job_id>.if conditional to prevent a job from running unless a condition is met. You can use any supported context and expression to create a conditional. For more information on which contexts are supported in this key, see Accessing contextual information about workflow runs.

When you use expressions in an if conditional, you can, optionally, omit the ${{ }} expression syntax because GitHub Actions automatically evaluates the if conditional as an expression. However, this exception does not apply everywhere.

You must always use the ${{ }} expression syntax or escape with '', "", or () when the expression starts with !, since ! is reserved notation in YAML format. For example:

if: ${{ ! startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags/') }}

For more information, see Evaluate expressions in workflows and actions.

Example: Only run job for specific repository

This example uses if to control when the production-deploy job can run. It will only run if the repository is named octo-repo-prod and is within the octo-org organization. Otherwise, the job will be marked as skipped.

name: example-workflow
on: [push]
jobs:
  production-deploy:
    if: github.repository == 'octo-org/octo-repo-prod'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '14'
      - run: npm install -g bats

name: example-workflow
on: [push]
jobs:
  production-deploy:
    if: github.repository == 'octo-org/octo-repo-prod'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '14'
      - run: npm install -g bats

On a skipped job, you should see "This check was skipped."