Remove GitHub Actions deployment events from the pull request timeline

How to get rid of the noisy deployment history from pull requests on GitHub.

If you are using GitHub Actions deployment environments¹, using the environment: clause, chances are you are familiar with deployment event messages, such as

“<Someone> temporarily deployed to <Environment>.”

These messages are posted on a pull request timeline whenever an environment is activated. They contribute to a noisy UI, and there is no obvious way to hide or turn them off.

Example of a noisy pull request conversation tab full with deployment events

Solution

There is no way to hide or turn off the deployments, but it’s straight forward to delete them automatically.

First, we’ll create a custom JavaScript action. It will take care of deleting any completed deployments:

# .github/actions/delete-deployments/action.yaml
name: Delete GitHub deployments
description: Delete all completed or inactive GitHub deployments
runs:
  using: "composite"
  steps:
    - uses: actions/github-script@v7
      with:
        script: |

          const completedStatuses = ["error", "failure", "success"];
          const inactiveStatuses = ["inactive"];

          // For all deployments...
          const deployments = await github.paginate(github.rest.repos.listDeployments, {
            owner: context.repo.owner,
            repo: context.repo.repo,
          });

          console.log(`found ${deployments.length} deployments`);

          await Promise.all(
            deployments.map(async (deployment) => {
              const statuses = await github.rest.repos.listDeploymentStatuses({
                owner: context.repo.owner,
                repo: context.repo.repo,
                deployment_id: deployment.id,
              });

              const isCompleted = statuses.data.some((status) => completedStatuses.includes(status.state));
              const isInactive = statuses.data.some((status) => inactiveStatuses.includes(status.state));

              if (!isCompleted) {
                console.log(`skipping deployment ${deployment.id}`);
                return Promise.resolve();
              }

              // ...ensure status is inactive...
              if (!isInactive) {
                console.log(`inactivating and removing deployment ${deployment.id}`);
                await github.rest.repos.createDeploymentStatus({
                  owner: context.repo.owner,
                  repo: context.repo.repo,
                  deployment_id: deployment.id,
                  state: 'inactive'
                });
              } else {
                console.log(`removing deployment ${deployment.id}`);
              }

              // ...then delete the deployment
              return github.rest.repos.deleteDeployment({
                owner: context.repo.owner,
                repo: context.repo.repo,
                deployment_id: deployment.id
              });
            })
          );

Here we fetch the deployments from the GitHub REST API, and then delete the ones that aren’t in progress. Note that only inactive deployments can be deleted², so we mark completed deployments as inactive.

Then, we’ll set it to run whenever a given workflow, say my-workflow, is completed.

# .github/workflows/common-cleanup.yaml
name: common-cleanup

on:
  # Run after a workflow completes
  workflow_run:
    types: [completed]
    workflows:
      # list the appropriate workflows or use globs
      - my-workflow

permissions:
  contents: read # for checkout
  deployments: write # for deleting deployments

concurrency:
  # Make sure every job has shared group id
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-shared
  cancel-in-progress: true

jobs:
  cleanup:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Delete inactive GitHub deployments
        uses: ./.github/actions/delete-deployments

The common-cleanup workflow runs after the specified workflows have completed.

Example cleanup workflow run after another workflow has completed

Now our GitHub pull request timeline will stay clean. We didn’t hide or disable the deployment status notifications, but we did get rid of them.

Pitfalls

Note that the workflow_run event will only trigger a workflow run if the workflow file exists on the default branch ³. So you’ll have to place the .github/workflows/common-cleanup.yaml on main (or your default branch) in order to see it work.

Also, if you have other applications doing deployments, or you use deployment events to provide links in pull requests, you may want to add some extra filters to the custom JavaScript action.