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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 your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, 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 your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, 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