🚀 New release: repository admins can now archive pull requests

[moraesc]

Repository admins can now archive pull requests to remove them from public view without permanently deleting them.

When a pull request is archived:

• It is automatically closed and locked.
• It is visible only to repository admins.
• Non-admin visitors to the pull request URL receive a 404.

Pull requests can be archived in bulk or on an individual basis. If a pull request is later unarchived, it becomes visible again and remains closed and locked.

Why this helps

This adds a moderation-focused option for:

• Handling spammy or abusive pull requests
• Supporting legal or policy requirements where deletion is not preferred
• Preserving historical context for administrators

You can also find archived pull requests with the is:archived filter to support triage workflows.

We’d love your feedback! Please share your questions and comments in this Community discussion.

[m-m-adams]

Could I ask why this is limited to the admin role?

It feels like it should be a maintainer permission instead. My impression was that the admin role is intended for managing roles and repository settings, so I think archiving (and especially reading archived PRs) should be at a lower level

[moraesc]

Hey @m-m-adams, we've gotten a handful of feedback asking for archiving to be available for users with the triage role or higher levels of access so we're looking into making this change. I'll let you know when I have more updates!

[seangoodvibes]

Just wanted to echo the feedback from @m-m-adams above

What we were hoping this archive feature would offer is the ability to archive posts so that they are just moved away from the main PR tab but still available for users to see if they search for it / access it directly (e.g. via link).

Basically like a default filter that would automatically exclude archived PR's.

Currently we have to manually filter out PR's we don't want to see right now which is frustrating as every time you open your browser or visit the repo on a new tab you have to re-set the filter again.

[moraesc]

@seangoodvibes The default filter makes sense - let me see what we can do here. Regarding users still being able to search for archiving PRs, is there a reason why you want users to still be able to access these as opposed to only admins?

[seangoodvibes]

@seangoodvibes The default filter makes sense - let me see what we can do here. Regarding users still being able to search for archiving PRs, is there a reason why you want users to still be able to access these as opposed to only admins?

Hi,

It was more in the absence of having a default filter to hide PR's.

But also the general thought was that we currently have users submitting feature PR's while we are in a feature freeze (we're only merging bug fix PR's right now).

We don't necessarily want them to stop opening feature PR's because we will review them eventually but that may be months down the road.

So we have a lot of clutter on our repo and want to set aside the PR's we don't want to look at right now but also still give the users who created those PR's to continue to update them if they wish to do so.

Thanks for hearing us :)!

[moraesc]

Hey everyone, wanted to share a quick update. We just rolled back the feature temporarily due to a performance issue we saw a result of the roll out. Our team is looking into it at the moment and we're hoping to have a fix out shortly so you can all keep the using the feature again. I'll post an update as soon as it's fixed! Thank you all for your patience 🙏