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Improved pull request merge experience is now generally available

The improved merge experience on the pull request page is now generally available! This update is designed to help you better understand the state of your pull request and get it merged faster.

Screenshot of the updated merge box page on the pull request page showing it is approved, a list of status checks (some failing), and a message about not having any merge conflicts.

This experience supports all the usual ways of merging: direct, bypass and merge, auto-merge, and merge queue, and works with rulesets to ensure pull requests meet all the requirements to merge.

What’s new

The new experience is designed to feel familiar, but also improves on the previous experience. Here are some highlights:

  • Checks grouped by status: checks are now grouped by status with failing checks prioritized at the top of the list, making it easier to identify problems that need attention
  • Checks ordered logically: status checks are now ordered using natural ordering to make it easier to find a specific check, especially when the list gets long
  • Improved rule enforcement: errors resulting from failing commit metadata rules (like invalid commit messages) are now reported at the point of merging so they can be corrected
  • Improved accessibility: consistent keyboard navigation, focus management, and landmarks help make the experience more accessible to everyone

Get help

Learn more about merging a pull request.

To suggest a feature, report a problem, or discuss this improved experience, visit the GitHub Community.

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Edit the GitHub-owned image on a larger hosted runner

Starting today, customers can change the runner image on larger hosted runners without deleting and re-creating them. You can now update the image and the change will be applied on all future workflow runs to that label. For customers using static IPs, you can change the image on your runner while keeping your IP addresses the same.

Note: partner images cannot be edited at this time and still require the runner to be deleted and re-created.

To edit your runners, follow the steps outlined in our documentation.

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Recent improvements to Artifact Attestations

We released a collection of improvements to Artifact Attestations to make the verification of attestations easier and more consistent.

Artifact Attestations let you create provenance signatures, which provide an unforgeable paper trail that links your artifact back to its originating workflow run. By verifying the signature, you can gate deployments to ensure that what you deploy is exactly what you built, guaranteeing that the artifact has not been tampered with.

Today we are announcing multiple improvements based on the user feedback we have received:

  • Attestation verification defaults to build provenance: Build provenance is just one type of information that can be attested to an artifact. It provides a verifiable trail that links the artifact back to its originating workflow run, ensuring its authenticity and integrity. However, other types of information can also be attested to an artifact, for example a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). Attestations can be verified by running gh attestation verify using the GitHub CLI. Previously, verification succeeded as soon as there was any attestation associated with the artifact. However, we observed that provenance is verified in the vast majority of cases. Therefore, we altered the CLI to default to provenance when no predicate type is specified. This change ensures that verification does not pass merely because, for example, an SBOM was attested to the artifact. To verify an SBOM, the predicate type must be explicitly supplied as a parameter using gh attestation verify with the --predicate-type parameter.
  • CLI outputs evaluated policies during verification: When verifying an attestation, the CLI now outputs all the policies it evaluated to determine whether the verification succeeds or fails. This increases transparency, making it easier to understand the reasons behind the verification outcome.
  • Attest actions support multiple subjects: Following the release to support attesting multiple subjects, we have enhanced our attest, attest-build-provenance and attest-sbom actions to also accept a checksum file that contains a list of artifacts and their corresponding digests as input.
  • Attestation verification is now monotonic: This means that once verification passes for an artifact, the addition of another attestation cannot change that status. Verification now succeeds if at least one attestation passes verification. This ensures that downstream processes, such as gated deployments, are not affected for any legitimate build that has a valid provenance attestation, even if someone adds another attestation that is bad or malformed.

For more information about Artifact Attestations, see Using artifact attestations to establish provenance for builds in the GitHub documentation. If you have any feedback on Artifact Attestations, join the discussion in the GitHub Community.

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Improved pull request merge experience enabled by default in public preview

The improved merge experience on the pull request page announced in December will be enabled by default over the next few days! The feature remains in public preview while we address feedback (keep it coming!) and make final improvements before making it generally available later this quarter.

Screenshot of the updated merge box page on the pull request page showing that 1 review is required, a list of status checks (some failing), and a message about not having any merge conflicts.

This improved experience, while still familiar, is designed to help you better understand the state of your pull request and get it merged faster. To learn more, see the public preview announcement.

Recent fixes

There have been numerous bugs fixed and feature gaps filled since the public preview launched last year. Here are some notable fixes:

  • Fixed: Enabling auto-merge, deleting branch (after merging), or restoring branch previously failed with an unexpected error message.
  • Fixed: In certain scenarios, the commit author email address shown when merging the pull request would not match the email address in the resulting merge (or squash) commit.
  • Fixed: GitHub Actions workflow runs could only be approved from the classic merge experience.
  • Fixed: Status check durations were missing.

We’ve also made various improvements, including natural ordering for status checks. For a more complete list, see the recently fixed section of this discussion.

How to turn it off

To switch back to the classic experience, click the Switch back to the classic merge experience just below the merge experience on the Conversation page:

A screenshot showing how to switch back to the classic merge experience

If you want to return to the improved experience, click Try the new merge experience below the merge box on the pull request page:

A screenshot showing how to re-enable the improved merge experience

You can also toggle the experience via the feature preview dialog.

How to provide feedback

We want to hear from you! To provide feedback, ask questions, and see a list of known issues, visit the GitHub Community improved merge box discussion.

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Notice of upcoming deprecations and breaking changes for GitHub Actions

Changes to check run status modification

To ensure the trustworthiness and security of Actions Check Run results, developers will soon lose the ability to modify the conclusion and status of an Actions-created check run using the GitHub token from a workflow run. This change will take effect on March 31, 2025. Impacted workflows will start displaying annotations during the week of February 17, 2025.

Updates to the network allow list for self-hosted runners and Azure private networking

In preparation for the public preview of consuming Immutable Actions in February 2025, GitHub has started migrating standard hosted runner customers to immutable actions. There is no action required on your end. This means GitHub Actions will use as an immutable action where available and will default to traditional actions resolution where none exist.

For customers using self-hosted runners, please ensure your self-hosted runner allow lists are updated to accommodate the network traffic. Specifically, you should allow traffic to pkg.actions.githubusercontent.com to ensure immutable actions can be downloaded successfully and jobs don’t fail during setup. If you already allow *.actions.githubusercontent.com (which is listed as a required domain) then no action is necessary. You will also need to enable traffic to ghcr.io for publishing new versions of an immutable action in the future, which will be available with the GA release.

Customers who have not updated their allow lists will automatically be opted out from using immutable actions during the migration. Once GitHub confirms that the runners have been updated, you will automatically be opted back in once the allow lists are updated. If you need to manually opt out or in for using immutable actions, please contact support.

This update also affects runners in all versions of GitHub Enterprise Server that use the GitHub Connect feature to download actions directly from github.com. Customers are advised to update their self-hosted runner network allow lists accordingly. For further guidance on communication between self-hosted runners and GitHub, please refer to our documentation.

Additionally, we’ve updated our guidance for configuring Azure private networking to account for the new domains. The following IP addresses have been added to the NSG template in our documentation.

– 140.82.121.33/32
– 140.82.121.34/32
– 140.82.113.33/32
– 140.82.113.34/32
– 140.82.112.33/32
– 140.82.112.34/32
– 140.82.114.33/32
– 140.82.114.34/32
– 192.30.255.164/31
– 4.237.22.32/32
– 20.217.135.1/32
– 4.225.11.196/32
– 20.26.156.211/32

Ubuntu 20 image brownouts

To raise awareness of the upcoming removal of Ubuntu 20, we will temporarily fail jobs using the ubuntu-20.04 label starting in March 2025. The brownouts will occur on the following dates and times:

  • March 4 14:00 UTC – 22:00 UTC
  • March 11 13:00 UTC – 21:00 UTC
  • March 18 13:00 UTC – 21:00 UTC
  • March 25 13:00 UTC – 21:00 UTC

actions/cache v1-v2 and actions/toolkit cache package brownouts

To raise awareness of the upcoming removal, we have scheduled brownouts for the following dates/times, Actions jobs referencing a deprecated verion of the Cache action will fail.

  • February 18, 2pm – 10pm UTC
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Introducing the “Sustainability” category on GitHub Marketplace

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of a new category on GitHub Marketplace: Sustainability.

This new category is designed to highlight GitHub Actions and apps that focus on optimizing workflows to minimize environmental impact. Whether it’s by reducing resource consumption, streamlining builds, or enabling green practices in software development1, this is a space for creators to showcase tools that contribute to a more sustainable future.

If you’re a creator, we encourage you to tag your listings with Sustainability if you believe your app or action aligns with the above. Publishing to the Marketplace is straightforward — here’s how you can get started:

For users, this category provides a dedicated space to discover and explore tools that aim to make software development workflows more environmentally friendly. While GitHub doesn’t verify the claims made by creators in this category, we encourage you to do your own research and find tools that align with your values and needs.

Currently, the Sustainability category is a blank slate, but we’re excited to see it come to life as creators tag their listings. Visit github.com/marketplace to explore the category and check back as new tools become available.

We can’t wait to see what the community shares! 🚀🌍

  1. The Green Software Foundation defines green software as “Software that is responsible for emitting fewer greenhouse gases.” ↩
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Actions Get workflow usage and Get workflow run usage endpoints closing down

As part of the ongoing transition of Enterprise customers and Team plan customers to our new billing platform, the Actions Get workflow usage and Get workflow run usage endpoints will be closing down. The transition of Enterprise and Team plan customers to the new billing platform will complete by April 1, 2025.

Actions usage information is available via the billing platform usage endpoint. This endpoint summarizes Actions usage by SKU, organization, and repository, however it does not provide detailed workflow information. For more information, refer to Getting GitHub Actions billing data from the new response data.

On the new billing platform, workflow information is available in the usage report, which can be requested from the usage page. For more information, refer to Viewing usage.

Learn more about the new billing platform or share feedback on this change in the community discussion.

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Larger hosted runner enhancements: Edit runner size and Windows Server 4vCPU runner availability

GitHub Actions is excited to announce new enhancements to our suite of larger hosted runners.

Edit the size of a runner

Starting today, you can edit the size of your larger hosted runners. For customers using static IPs, you can size up or down while keeping your IP addresses the same. To edit your runners, follow the steps outlined in our documentation.

Windows Server 2025 4vCPU runner

We now offer Windows Server on a 4vCPU machine using the Windows 2025 image. The Windows Server 2025 image is still in public preview and subject to change. For more information on the Windows Server 2025, visit our runner-images repository. To set up a 4vCPU runner, follow the guide in our documentation.

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Actions: GitHub-hosted larger runner & network configuration REST APIs (GA)

Today, Actions larger runner REST APIs are now generally available. These new APIs empower you to programmatically create larger runners, assign them to a runner group, configure network settings for Azure private networking, and apply these configurations to specific runner groups.

With this release, you can now create and manage runners at scale without using the GitHub interface, saving time and reducing manual effort. Additionally, the APIs offer flexibility to apply network configurations to specific runner groups for Azure private networking, ensuring the desired configurations are available to your development teams.

For more information, please refer to the Actions API documentation and look for the new larger runner and network configuration endpoints. Come join the conversation in the community discussion and share your experience on the new APIs.

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Legacy Docker Registry closing down

GitHub will deprecate the Docker registry for GitHub Packages on Feb 24th, 2025 in favor of the GitHub Container Registry, which supports Docker packages. All packages in the Docker registry will be deleted and cannot be fetched past the deprecation date.

When GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) became generally available in 2021, we automatically migrated packages in the Docker registry over, with the exception of packages that encountered namespace conflicts due to the same package name in both registries. To see if you are impacted, use our API endpoint to check for any affected packages that will need to migrate from the legacy Docker registry to GHCR.

If you are not in the small group with conflicting packages, no action is needed, as all requests will automatically forward to GHCR.

To learn more about working with the GitHub Container Registry

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Linux arm64 hosted runners now available for free in public repositories (Public Preview)

Now in public preview, Linux arm64 hosted runners are available for free in public repositories. Following the release of arm64 larger hosted runners in June, this offering now extends to the open source-community. Powered by the Cobalt 100-based processors, these 4 vCPU runners can deliver up to a 40% performance boost compared to Microsoft Azure’s previous generation of Arm-based VMs, providing a power-efficient compute layer for your workloads. Arm-native developers can now build, test and deploy entirely within the arm64 architecture without the need for virtualization on your Actions runs.

How to use the runners

To leverage the arm64 hosted runners, add the following labels in your public repository workflow runs:
– ubuntu-24.04-arm
– ubuntu-22.04-arm

Please note that these labels will not work in private repositories, and the workflow will fail if added. All runs in public repositories will adhere to our standard runners usage limits, with maximum concurrencies based on your plan type. While the arm64 runners are in public preview, you may experience longer queue times during peak usage hours.

Images

In partnership with Arm, GitHub provides the Ubuntu VM images for these runners, helping customers with a seamless start to building on Arm. To view the list of installed software, give feedback, or report issues with the image, visit the partner-runner-images repository.

Get started today!

To get started, simply add one of the new labels to theruns-on syntax in your public Actions workflow file. For more information on arm64 runners and how to use them, see our documentation and join the conversation in the community discussion.

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Copilot Users Can Ask About A Failed Actions Job (GA)

The ability to ask Copilot about Actions job failures is now Generally Available.

Simply press “Explain Error” from the pull request merge box or the Actions job page to chat with Copilot about why a job failed, and get tailored guidance on how to resolve the issue.

To get started, in the pull request merge box, select “More actions” for a failing check, and then “Explain Error” to get help. Or, on the job page for the failed job, hit the same button next to the search bar.

Image of Explain Error in the merge box of a PR

Copilot can analyze one job at a time. Each time it’s used, it consumes a chat message. See the Copilot subscriptions page for more information on chat allowances for each Copilot plan.

We’d love to hear your feedback! Do drop it in the discussion in the GitHub Community.

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GitHub Actions: Ubuntu 20 runner image brownout dates and other breaking changes

Ubuntu 20 image is closing down

We are beginning the process of closing down the Ubuntu 20 hosted runner image, following our N-1 OS support policy. This image will be fully retired by April 1, 2025. We recommend updating workflows to use ubuntu-22.04, or ubuntu-24.04.

Brownout dates

To raise awareness of the upcoming removal we will temporarily fail jobs using the ubuntu-20.04 label starting in March 2025. The brownouts will occur on the following dates and times:
– March 4 14:00 UTC – 22:00 UTC
– March 11 13:00 UTC – 21:00 UTC
– March 18 13:00 UTC – 21:00 UTC
– March 25 13:00 UTC – 21:00 UTC

Upcoming breaking changes to hosted runner images

For a full list of this month’s breaking changes to our hosted runner images, please see our announcement page.

Artifact actions v3 brownouts

Artifact actions v3 will be closing down by January 30th, 2025. To raise awareness of the upcoming removal, we will temporarily fail jobs using v3 of actions/upload-artifact or actions/download-artifact. Builds that are scheduled to run during the brownout periods will fail. The brownouts are scheduled for the following dates and times:
– January 16th 3pm – 7pm UTC
– January 23rd 2pm – 10pm UTC

Note: v3 of the artifact actions will continue to be supported for GitHub Enterprise Server customers. The brownouts and retirement will not affect your workflows.

actions/cache v1-v2 and actions/toolkit cache package closing down

Starting February 1st, 2025, Actions’ cache storage will move to a new architecture, as a result we are closing down v1-v2 of actions/cache. In conjunction, all previous versions of the @actions/cache package package (prior to 4.0.0) in actions/toolkit will be closing down. If users run workflows that call the retired versions after March 1st, 2025, the workflows will fail.

You should upgrade to actions/cache v4 or v3 as soon as possible to avoid any disruption in March. For information on how to migrate, see the announcements in the actions/cache and actions/toolkit repositories.

To raise awareness of the upcoming deprecation, we have scheduled brownouts for the following dates/times, builds that are scheduled to run during the brownout periods will fail.

February 4, 5pm – 6pm UTC
February 11, 3pm – 7pm UTC
February 18, 2pm – 10pm UTC

Note: all versions of actions/cache will continue to be supported for GitHub Enterprise Server customers. The retirement will not affect your workflows.

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Actions: Xcode 16.2 will replace Xcode 16.0 in macOS-14 Images

Starting January 6, 2025 GitHub-Hosted macOS runner images will be replacing Xcode 16.0 with Xcode 16.2. This change applies to both macOS-14 Intel and ARM64 based runner images. If you rely on Xcode 16.0, upgrade to Xcode 16.1 in order to maintain service continuity in your Actions workflows.

Our support policy for macOS-14 is:
– Xcode 15: All minor releases with the full platform tools suite.
– Xcode 16: Two minor releases (excluding visionOS tools), following a “last two” principle where the oldest version is replaced by the latest as updates are released. Beta versions are not included.

Additional Resources

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Windows Server 2025 is now in public preview

The Windows 2025 server image for GitHub Actions hosted runners is now available in public preview. To start using this image in your Actions workflows, update your workflow file to include runs-on: windows-2025.

Please note that the Windows 2025 image has a different list of installed tools and tool versions. See the full list of changed software including differences in the announcement.

If you spot any issues with your workflows when using Windows Server 2025, or if you have feedback on the software installed on the image, please let us know by creating an issue in the runner-images repository. While the runner image is in preview, you may experience longer queue times during peak usage hours.

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