gcr.io repositories

This document provides an overview of Artifact Registry gcr.io repositories. gcr.io repositories let Container Registry users maintain their existing Google Cloud infrastructure by storing container images in Artifact Registry and supporting requests to the same gcr.io URLs used by Container Registry.

gcr.io repositories hosted on Artifact Registry are a Generally Available feature, and they will continue to work after the Container Registry deprecation.

To transition to gcr.io repositories on Artifact Registry, follow the instructions in Migrate automatically to Artifact Registry.

Background information on Container Registry deprecation

Container Registry is deprecated. Effective March 18, 2025, Container Registry is shut down and writing images to Container Registry is unavailable.

gcr.io URLs hosted on Artifact Registry are not affected by the Container Registry shutdown.

For more details about the Container Registry deprecation and how to migrate to Artifact Registry, see Container Registry deprecation.

gcr.io domain support

Artifact Registry supports requests to the gcr.io domain in gcr.io repositories in multi-regional locations corresponding with Container Registry host locations.

Container Registry hostname Artifact Registry repository location Artifact Registry repository name
gcr.io us gcr.io
asia.gcr.io asia asia.gcr.io
eu.gcr.io europe eu.gcr.io
us.gcr.io us us.gcr.io

Storage bucket configuration

When you create a repository in Artifact Registry, Artifact Registry does not create corresponding Cloud Storage buckets in your project. If you have automation for Container Registry that interacts directly with storage buckets, you must update it to make corresponding changes to the Artifact Registry repository.

For example, if you programmatically grant Cloud Storage permissions on storage buckets for Container Registry, you must update that automation to grant Artifact Registry permissions on the Artifact Registry repositories that host images for the gcr.io domain.

Limitations

The following limitations apply to Artifact Registry gcr.io repositories:

  • When transitioning from Container Registry, you cannot map a Container Registry host to an Artifact Registry repository in a different project.

  • Each Container Registry hostname maps to only one corresponding Artifact Registry gcr.io repository in the same multi-region.

  • Names for gcr.io repositories are predefined and you can't modify them.

If you need more control over the location of your repositories, you can transition to pkg.dev repositories in Artifact Registry. Since pkg.dev repositories don't have any support for the gcr.io domain, this transition approach requires more changes to your existing automation and workflows. See Choose a transition option to learn about feature differences.

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