This Ruby script will bulk remove all Slack files older than 30 days. Just add your API token from https://api.slack.com/web#authentication into the token quotes at the top of the file.

slack_delete.rb

require 'net/http'
require 'json'
require 'uri'

@token = ''

def list_files
  ts_to = (Time.now - 30 * 24 * 60 * 60).to_i # 30 days ago
  params = {
    token: @token,
    ts_to: ts_to,
    count: 1000
  }
  uri = URI.parse('https://slack.com/api/files.list')
  uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(params)
  response = Net::HTTP.get_response(uri)
  JSON.parse(response.body)['files']
end

def delete_files(file_ids)
  file_ids.each do |file_id|
    params = {
      token: @token,
      file: file_id
    }
    uri = URI.parse('https://slack.com/api/files.delete')
    uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(params)
    response = Net::HTTP.get_response(uri)
    p "#{file_id}: #{JSON.parse(response.body)['ok']}"
  end
end

p 'Deleting files...'
files = list_files
file_ids = files.map { |f| f['id'] }
delete_files(file_ids)
p 'Done!'

@vadimpeskov I was facing the same issue.

Problem was that I was trying to use the client secret of the slack application that I created from here: https://api.slack.com/web#authentication

But this is generating the "invalid_token" error and so the list_files method was returning nil value and for this reason the error "undefined methodmap' for nil:NilClass" was raised at line 35.

I solved this issue by generating a real token (NOT client_secret or cliend_id related to an app).
To generate a token you have to follow this guide: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/215770388-Create-and-regenerate-API-tokens

@jamescmartinez many thanks for this! But please consider to update the description of how to use this by telling people to generate the legacy token as reported here: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/215770388-Create-and-regenerate-API-tokens

@jamescmartinez Super helpful!

Ran into the same issue as @jwilkinson with the 100 files per run. For people with a ton of files, you can run it multiple times with:

for run in {1..10}
do
  ruby slack_delete.rb
done

Change the outside limit on the range to be as big as you need it to be.

I ran the script yesterday using the token generated following @diegodurante post and it seems to only have deleted my user files, I am a team owner, any ideas?

I just built a python script that does basically the same thing but will a few more command line arguments https://gitlab.com/tomleo/SlackFileCleanup/ I would have forked this repo but I don't know ruby. ☮️

Great script!

I updated Line 35 to this:

file_ids = files.select{ |f| f["size"] > 10000 }.map { |f| f['id'] }

It removes only heavy files (> 10KB).

OMG. ❤️ Thank you so much!

Thanks!

Very helpful. Also very easy to parse your code so I could figure out what you were doing before I ran it ;)

Is it only me? I have successfully deleted a big bunch of files but Slack Analitycs still shows the same size of storage usage. I am sure that files have been deleted because if I go to Files panel I can see only 99 instead of few thousands.

Thank's man, works like a charm

@jamescmartinez,
Great piece of work, it really works like a charm, I had one question there are more than hundred member in my team and I have their slack token with me but I have to use 1 token at one time and run this script is there any way to add multiple token in this script so that I can run this script for a group of users ?

Second it is checking for each and every file that was shared with this person and it took long time to delete because some of the files are not shared with this person so script took a lot time, is there any possibility so that script could check only for the files that were uploaded by the use only and delete them ?

Its just a humble request if possible although you have already made our life easy :)

Thank you so much!

Worked just fine! 👍

Great script, thanks

I have a trouble... When I running the script, I get a lot of messages like this
"F206K98J3: false"
All files after the script is finished remain not deleted

UPD: Resolved - you must be an admin of your workspace to delete files

Anyone modify it to download the file before deleting it? Would be useful, so you can free Slack storage but still have some stuff archived.

@MikeLund, it only seems to work with current year files, anything older remains.

this is great, thanks! I converted to nodejs to better fit my environment. check it out here https://gist.github.com/evangs/85f70573a9046990df4ff820151e0b08

If you get rate limited by slack insert a wait on line 22
sleep 1
Found I had to go all the way down to one a second to avoid getting throttled.

I was using the script and worked like a charm, however last week it starting failing and I've no idea of Ruby, maybe I've got Ruby updated or something? It throws away this error:

bulk_slack_files.rb:35:in <main>': undefined method map' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)

line 35 is the same as the one shown in the gist file_ids = files.map { |f| f['id'] }

Any clue? Thanks!

@nandodelauni I had the same error and it was because I was using an invalid token

thanks @luisenrike!

here's the new URL for generating Legacy workspace tokens:
https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens

Sorry, I'm not a programmer and am having problems figuring out where to run this code.

Edit: Ahh nevermind, a colleague helped me out. I had to download node.js first :-(

I just added a node gist to batch delete files older than a year
https://gist.github.com/dominikwilkowski/76d99ae84848c39e54494f4dbdd4327d

Comes with instructions too :)

An easier way is to use, no coding required.

https://delete-slack-files.com/

I get an HTML doc with little helpful error handling, that starts:

400 ERROR

The request could not be satisfied.

@ayhamg Right now that link is 404.

I just developed a bot that helps you to manage this, any contribution is welcome!
https://github.com/danibram/scrapy-slack-bot