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.

You can now iterate on your prompt in any user repositories without breaking your flow. With just one click, jump from a prompt in your GitHub-hosted code to the GitHub Models prompt editor:

Screenshot of the GitHub UI with "Open as prompt in GitHub Models" menu item selected.

This feature detects files with “prompt” in the content and uses 10 lines above and below the selected line as context. Once in the prompt editor, you can experiment with models, fine-tune your prompts, and customize parameters.

GitHub Models is a catalog and prompt editor of AI models to help you build AI features and products. You can start using models for free with just your GitHub PAT. This is the first of more features to come that will help with seamless integration between your existing workflow and the GitHub Models prompt editor!

Learn more about GitHub Models or join the discussion in our community forums.

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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 different 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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