Clean up images in Container Registry

When you are ready to stop using Container Registry, delete the remaining images by deleting the storage buckets for Container Registry.

When redirection is enabled, commands to delete images in gcr.io paths delete images in the corresponding Artifact Registry gcr.io repository, but they don't delete images stored on Container Registry hosts.

To safely remove all Container Registry images, delete the Cloud Storage buckets for each Container Registry hostname.

We recommend you transition to Artifact Registry before you delete your Cloud Storage buckets.

To delete each Container Registry storage bucket:

Console

  1. Go to the Cloud Storage page in the Google Cloud console.

  2. Select the storage bucket to delete. In the bucket names, PROJECT-ID is your Google Cloud project ID.

    • gcr.io: artifacts.PROJECT-ID.appspot.com
    • asia.gcr.io: asia.artifacts.PROJECT-ID.appspot.com
    • eu.gcr.io: eu.artifacts.PROJECT-ID.appspot.com
    • us.gcr.io: us.artifacts.PROJECT-ID.appspot.com

  3. Click Delete. A confirmation dialog box appears.

  4. To confirm deletion, enter the bucket name and then click Delete.

gcloud

If you want to bulk delete a hundred thousand or more images in a bucket, avoid using the gcloud CLI since the deletion process takes a long time to complete. Use the Google Cloud console to perform the operation instead. For more information, see deleting Cloud Storage objects in bulk.

To delete a bucket, use the gcloud storage rm command with the --recursive flag.

gcloud storage rm gs://BUCKET-NAME --recursive

Replace BUCKET-NAME with the Container Registry storage bucket name. In the bucket names, PROJECT-ID is your Google Cloud project ID.

  • gcr.io: artifacts.PROJECT-ID.appspot.com
  • asia.gcr.io: asia.artifacts.PROJECT-ID.appspot.com
  • eu.gcr.io: eu.artifacts.PROJECT-ID.appspot.com
  • us.gcr.io: us.artifacts.PROJECT-ID.appspot.com

The response looks like the following example:

Removing gs://artifacts.my-project.appspot.com/...

If other Google Cloud services are running in the same Google Cloud project, leave the Container Registry API enabled. If you try to disable the Container Registry API. Container Registry displays a warning if other services with a configured dependency are enabled in the project. Disabling the Container Registry API automatically disables any services in the same project with a configured dependency, even if you are not currently using Container Registry with those services.