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Disabling and enabling a workflow

You can disable and re-enable a workflow using the GitHub UI, the REST API, or GitHub CLI.

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Disabling a workflow allows you to stop a workflow from being triggered without having to delete the file from the repo. You can easily re-enable the workflow again on GitHub.

Temporarily disabling a workflow can be useful in many scenarios. These are a few examples where disabling a workflow might be helpful:

  • A workflow error that produces too many or wrong requests, impacting external services negatively.
  • A workflow that is not critical and is consuming too many minutes on your account.
  • A workflow that sends requests to a service that is down.
  • Workflows on a forked repository that aren't needed (for example, scheduled workflows).

Warning: To prevent unnecessary workflow runs, scheduled workflows may be disabled automatically. When a public repository is forked, scheduled workflows are disabled by default. In a public repository, scheduled workflows are automatically disabled when no repository activity has occurred in 60 days.

You can also disable and enable a workflow using the REST API. For more information, see "REST API endpoints for workflows."

Disabling a workflow

  1. On GitHub, navigate to the main page of the repository.

  2. Under your repository name, click Actions.

    Screenshot of the tabs for the "github/docs" repository. The "Actions" tab is highlighted with an orange outline.

  3. In the left sidebar, click the workflow you want to disable.

  4. Click to display a dropdown menu and click Disable workflow.

    Screenshot of a workflow. The "Show workflow options" button, labeled with a horizontal kebab icon, and the "Disable workflow" menu item are outlined in dark orange.

To learn more about GitHub CLI, see "About GitHub CLI."

To disable a workflow, use the workflow disable subcommand. Replace workflow with either the name, ID, or file name of the workflow you want to disable. For example, "Link Checker", 1234567, or "link-check-test.yml". If you don't specify a workflow, GitHub CLI returns an interactive menu for you to choose a workflow.

gh workflow disable WORKFLOW

Enabling a workflow

You can re-enable a workflow that was previously disabled.

  1. On GitHub, navigate to the main page of the repository.

  2. Under your repository name, click Actions.

    Screenshot of the tabs for the "github/docs" repository. The "Actions" tab is highlighted with an orange outline.

  3. In the left sidebar, click the workflow you want to enable.

    Screenshot of the "Actions" page. In the left sidebar, a workflow name is highlighted with an outline in dark orange.

  4. Click Enable workflow.

To enable a workflow, use the workflow enable subcommand. Replace workflow with either the name, ID, or file name of the workflow you want to enable. For example, "Link Checker", 1234567, or "link-check-test.yml". If you don't specify a workflow, GitHub CLI returns an interactive menu for you to choose a workflow.

gh workflow enable WORKFLOW