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 :)

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.

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?

THANK YOU FOR THIS.

@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?

For anyone who has this issue, I had to add "Bearer " to mine and it worked -> Authorization: Bearer ghp_xxx or -Headers @{"Authorization"="Bearer ghp_xxx"}

Wow! I used reporemover.xyz and it worked like a charm. Thank you @moollaza!

I you want to delete all repo of an organization (in my case i have a personal org dedicated to some test) :
gh repo list my-org-name | sed -e 's/\s.*//' | xargs -L1 gh repo delete --yes

Worked FLAWLESSLY

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 reporemover.xyz.

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

goated tool. 🐐

Thank you, all. This has been driving me crazy for years!

Worked percfetly on Windows, thank you!

Worked perfectly, thank you!

Or also with python3+:

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

This still works. Thanks!

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

Best solution, without third-party tools.

This works for me in 2026 for personal repositories (paginated):

let repos = ''
const el = document.querySelectorAll('#user-repositories-list [itemprop~=codeRepository]')
    .forEach(e => {repos = repos + `"${e.innerText}"\n`})
console.log(repos)

Still useful, thanks a lot!

For Windows Users: Use PowerShell to delete multiple repos

Install the github command line tool:

https://cli.github.com/

Login with the command line tool:

gh auth refresh -s delete_repo

GET the list of current repos:

`gh repo list your_login_name_here --limit 500 --json nameWithOwner -q ".[].nameWithOwner" > my-repos.txt`

COPY my-repos.txt delete-repos.txt

DELETE all repos in delete-repos.txt file:

	Get-Content .\delete-repos.txt | ForEach-Object {
		Write-Host "Deleting $_"
		gh repo delete $_ --yes
	}