Bulk delete github repos

README.md

Use this trick to bulk delete your old repos or old forks

(Inspired by https://medium.com/@icanhazedit/clean-up-unused-github-rpositories-c2549294ee45#.3hwv4nxv5)

1. Open in a new tab all to-be-deleted github repositores (Use the mouse’s middle click or Ctrl + Click) https://github.com/username?tab=repositories

2. Use one tab https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall to shorten them to a list.

3. Save that list to some path

4. The list should be in the form of “ur_username\repo_name” per line. Use regex search (Sublime text could help). Search for ' |.*' and replace by empty.

5. Register a new personal access token with a 'delete_repo perm' https://github.com/settings/tokens/new

6. Copy the access_token and run the following line replacing xxx with your access token.

Linux and OS X :

while read r;do curl -XDELETE -H 'Authorization: token xxx' "https://api.github.com/repos/$r ";done < repos

Windows:

get-content D:\repolist.txt | ForEach-Object { Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://api.github.com/repos/$_ -Method “DELETE” -Headers @{"Authorization"="token xxx"} }

Caution

I have only tested this script on Linux.

Have fun :)

Awesome!! Really helped me!
Something I encountered was that certain repos had titles after the repo path.
The regex wasn't working for VScode, so what I did was paste into google sheets (will work in excel also) and split by : then just pasted the first column into my final file.

Anybody know a way to bulk private-ize my repos?

The solutions above didn't work for me, so I approached this with https://gist.github.com/andybeak/602611212950559df9c102b0d1ae20c7
It works on Linux without needing jq or httpie. A bit hacky because it's hard coded to the current output format, but I don't do this task often enough to merit spending time on writing a beautiful automation script.

Thank you!

your method worked for me, here's how I ended up implementing it

#!/bin/bash

repos=(
	"username/repo1"
	"username/repo2"
	"username/repo3"
)

for i in "${repos[@]}"
do
   : 
   curl -XDELETE -H 'Authorization: token XXX' "https://api.github.com/repos/$i ";
done

In case anyone is interested, I built a little web app that helps you delete (or archive) multiple GitHub repos. It displays all your repos, and allows you to sort/filter them, and select which ones you want to modify. Under the hood, it just uses the GitHub API and an access token you provide.

You can try it out to at https://reporemover.xyz/.

It’s also open source, and available on GitHub.

In case anyone is interested, I built a little web app that helps you delete (or archive) multiple GitHub repos. It displays all your repos, and allows you to sort/filter them, and select which ones you want to modify. Under the hood, it just uses the GitHub API and an access token you provide.

You can try it out to at https://reporemover.xyz/.

It’s also open source, and available on GitHub.
@moollaza
I love this, but it doesn't give me a way to select repositories on organizations I have admin rights to. Any way to add that?

I love this...

Thanks for the feedback @DavidGriswoldTeacher. I'm glad to hear you like RepoRemover!

but it doesn't give me a way to select repositories on organizations I have admin rights to. Any way to add that?

There's actually an open issue already to add this. I spent a few minutes looking into it and I think it's possible, however when I was testing using the API, I couldn't get it to work. I'll have to spend more time investigating to see if its possible, but I expect it should be.

Thx for the tip
For those who need to delete with a visual interface I use this online demo of cloud explorer, you can very quickly delete many repos
http://cloud-explorer.org/

@moolaza that's awesome just deleted like 70 repos! Upvoted!

I have made a Node.js CLI that lets you bulk publicize, privatize, clone and/or delete repos for a personal Github account or an organization.
https://github.com/incorrupt/bulkrepos
It should be helpful at least to the people who want to backup their repos before deleting them :)

Just tried out RepoRemover. Works great! Thanks @moollaza!

Any of the above methods
I want to know
How do I remove Organizations' repositories in bulk
thank you！

@janosh you're welcome! I'm glad to hear it was useful :)

@learning2016 you can easily remove Org repos in bulk with https://reporemover.xyz

@moollaza You're awesome! Thanks!

thanks :)

@moollaza thanks , it works for me

@mooliza kudos, you saved hours of work!

@mooliza awesome !! you have created a website that github won't provide

@janosh you're welcome! I'm glad to hear it was useful :)

@learning2016 you can easily remove Org repos in bulk with https://reporemover.xyz

Very good indeed.

Repo Remover FTW !!!

https://reporemover.xyz

Or also with python3+:

pip install git+https://github.com/XavierTolza/PyGithubRepoDeleter.git
remove_github_repos --token <your token>

I've also written a small Node application that requires no installation, simply running npx bulk-delete-repo should do the trick

Repo remover only does personal repos not orgs :-(

Repo remover only does personal repos not orgs :-(

@dawesi, org repos should be supported. Do you have permissions to edit the repos in the org? Alternatively, are they private org repos?

If they are private, there is an open PR I need to review which should add support for those

Edit:
I've deployed the PR with support for Private Org repos here: https://repo-remover-op56z4vb4-moollaza.vercel.app/
The PR with the change is here for anyone interested: moollaza/repo-remover#182

In case anyone is interested, I built a little web app that helps you delete (or archive) multiple GitHub repos. It displays all your repos, and allows you to sort/filter them, and select which ones you want to modify. Under the hood, it just uses the GitHub API and an access token you provide.

You can try it out to at https://reporemover.xyz/.

It’s also open source, and available on GitHub.

Very, very, very helpful. Thank you!

...

For deleting organization team repos

1. Generate a personal access token with 'delete_repo' permission: https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
2. Open the teams repositories view and run following in the browsers console

let repos = ''
const el = document.querySelectorAll('#org-team-repositories > ul > li > div:nth-child(1) > div > div:nth-child(2) > a > span').forEach(e => {repos = repos + `"${e.innerText}"\n`})
console.log(repos)

3. Copy paste the output to @aug2uag shell script and run it (fixed extra space typo in it):

#!/bin/bash

repos=(
	"username/repo1"
	"username/repo2"
	"username/repo3"
)

for i in "${repos[@]}"
do
   : 
   echo 'Delete' "$i";
   curl -XDELETE -H 'Authorization: token XXXX' "https://api.github.com/repos/$i";
done

@moollaza

I am generating the token from your link but the reporemover is telling me that the token is invalid? My tokens all start with ghp_ but reporemover is telling me they are invalid because of the underscore. Thoughts?

@connorferster are you sure you don't have a typo? I just tested the link and generated a token with the ghp_ prefix and it worked. Open an issue on GitHub or via email and I can try to see what's going on.

In case anyone is interested, I built a little web app that helps you delete (or archive) multiple GitHub repos. It displays all your repos, and allows you to sort/filter them, and select which ones you want to modify. Under the hood, it just uses the GitHub API and an access token you provide.
You can try it out to at https://reporemover.xyz/.
It’s also open source, and available on GitHub.

Very, very, very helpful. Thank you!

awesome !!!!!!

@sandro-git This is awesome! Thanks for all your hard work putting the web app together.

In case anyone is interested, I built a little web app that helps you delete (or archive) multiple GitHub repos. It displays all your repos, and allows you to sort/filter them, and select which ones you want to modify. Under the hood, it just uses the GitHub API and an access token you provide.

You can try it out to at https://reporemover.xyz/.

It’s also open source, and available on GitHub.

Amazing !!!
Worked very well

In case anyone is interested, I built a little web app that helps you delete (or archive) multiple GitHub repos. It displays all your repos, and allows you to sort/filter them, and select which ones you want to modify. Under the hood, it just uses the GitHub API and an access token you provide.

You can try it out to at https://reporemover.xyz/.

It’s also open source, and available on GitHub.

Very helpful . Thank you!

In case anyone is interested, I built a little web app that helps you delete (or archive) multiple GitHub repos. It displays all your repos, and allows you to sort/filter them, and select which ones you want to modify. Under the hood, it just uses the GitHub API and an access token you provide.

You can try it out to at https://reporemover.xyz/.

It’s also open source, and available on GitHub.

Amazing Thanks

You can try it out to at https://reporemover.xyz/.

@moollaza Thanks a lot, saved my time, man.