runners

Subscribe to all “runners” posts via RSS or follow GitHub Changelog on Twitter to stay updated on everything we ship.

~ cd github-changelog
~/github-changelog|main git log main
showing all changes successfully

Ubuntu 24 for GitHub-hosted runners is now GA

The Ubuntu 24.04 image for Actions is now generally available. To use Ubuntu 24 directly on your GitHub-hosted runners update runs-on: in your workflow file to ubuntu-24.04.

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-24.04
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v4
      - name: Build
        run: dotnet build
      - name: Run tests
        run: dotnet test

The Ubuntu 24.04 runner image has different tools and tool versions than Ubuntu 22.04.

ubuntu-latest migration

The ubuntu-latest label will migrate to Ubuntu 24 over the course of the next month, beginning September 23rd and finishing on October 30th. During migration, you can determine if your job has migrated by viewing the “Runner Image” information in the “Set up job” step of your Actions logs.

macOS 15 for GitHub-hosted runners in Public Beta

The macOS 15 image for Actions is now available in public beta. To use macOS 15 directly, update runs-on: in your workflow file to macos-15, macos-15-xlarge, or macos-15-large.

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: macos-15
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Build
        run: swift build
      - name: Run tests
        run: swift test

The macOS 15 runner image has different tools and tool versions than macOS 14.

To view the list of installed software for each image, or report issues, head to the runner-images repository.

See more

Following our change to default customers to use Node20, Node16 will reach end of life in the Actions runner on November 12, 2024.

From November 12 onward, we will no longer include Node16 in the Actions runner and customers will no longer be able to use Node16 Actions or operating systems that do not support Node20.

To prevent disruption to your Actions workflows, if you’re an Actions maintainer, update your actions to run on Node20 instead of Node16. If you’re an Actions user, update your workflows with latest versions of the actions, which run on Node20.

Learn more about Actions configuration settings or using versions for Actions. Join the discussion within GitHub Community.

See more

Over the next six months, we will be making the following changes and deprecations to the GitHub Actions service:

Reduction to Webhook rate limit in GitHub Actions
Starting October 1st, 2024 we will be adding a new rate limit of 1,250 requests per 10 seconds per repository for incoming Webhook events for GitHub Actions. After monitoring usage over the past several weeks, we believe that no customers will be impacted by this change, but if you believe you will need to exceed this in the future, please reach out to GitHub support.

Cache v1-v2 deprecation
Starting February 1st, 2025, Actions’ cache storage will move to a new architecture, resulting in the deprecation of v1-v2 of actions/cache. Attempting to use a version of the action after the announced deprecation date will result in a workflow failure. Please note: if you are pinned to a specific version or SHA of the action, your workflows will also fail after February 1st. We strongly encourage you to update your workflows to begin using v3 or v4 of actions/cache as soon as possible.

This deprecation will not impact any existing versions of GitHub Enterprise Server that are currently in use. Cached entries within their retention period will remain accessible from the UI or REST API regardless of the version used to upload. This announcement will also be added to the actions/cache repository.

See more

GitHub Actions will be making the following deprecations and breaking changes in our runners and services over the next 6 months.

Exclude hidden files by default in Upload Artifact GitHub Actions
From September 2nd, 2024, we will no longer include hidden files and folders as part of the default upload of the v3 and v4 upload-artifact actions. This reduces the risk that credentials are accidentally uploaded into artifacts. Customers who need to continue to upload these files can use a new option, ‘include-hidden-files’, to continue to do so.

Ubuntu 20 & Ubuntu 22 arm64 Images
On September 3rd, 2024, we are deprecating the Ubuntu 22/20 base images for our arm64 hosted runners as these are not widely used and customers are better served using the new Arm owned images. At that time all workflows using the Ubuntu 22 or 20 base image on arm64 will begin to fail. To change the image your runner is using, you can delete the runner and recreate a runner with the same name, to prevent failures. We recommend using the partner images provided by Arm:

  • Ubuntu 24.04 by Arm Limited
  • Ubuntu 22.04 by Arm Limited

.NET6 deprecation in the runner
In October, 2024, at the same time as we move to Node20 on the Actions runner, we will be deprecating .NET6 in the Actions runner and moving to .NET8. This is because .NET6 will reach end of life in November 2024. Any customers who are still using operating systems which are reliant on unsupported binaries will need to upgrade prior to this change. The removal of support for .NET6 means the following operating systems will no longer be supported from this time:
– Debian 10
– macOS 11.0
– macOS 10.15

Along with those already marked as unsupported in our changelog for the removal of Node16.

macOS12 runner image
We are beginning the deprecation process for the macOS 12 runner image, which allows us to balance our fleet capacity ahead of our upcoming macOS 15 launch. This image will be fully retired by the December 3rd, 2024. We recommend updating workflows to use `macos-14`, `macos-13`, or `macos-latest`.

Unsupported macOS labels
On December 3rd, 2024, we are deprecating some of our older and less used labels which are used for smaller numbers of workflows. The following runner labels will stop working from that time:

  • macos-11.0
  • macos-12-xl
  • macos-13-xl
  • macos-13-xl-arm64
  • macos-latest-xl
  • Macos-latest-xl-arm64
See more

GitHub Actions GPU hosted runners are now generally available for Windows and Linux, providing T4 GPU access to Actions customers.

The GPU hosted runners are fully managed by GitHub, with images managed by trusted partners on the Azure marketplace. They are also compatible with GitHub-hosted runners’ static IPs and private networking capabilities.

Get started

You can begin using GPU hosted runners in your organization or enterprise by:

  1. Setting up new larger runner GPUs through your runner groups
  2. Updating the ‘runs-on’ syntax in your Actions workflow file to call that runner name

More information about setting up, using, and pricing for GPU runners can be found in our documentation on hosted runners.

We’re eager to hear your feedback on these runners. Share your thoughts in our community discussions using this template.

See more

Today, GitHub announced the public beta of ArmⓇ-based Linux and Windows hosted runners for GitHub Actions.
This new addition to our suite of hosted runners provides power, performance & sustainability improvements for all your Actions jobs. Developers can now take advantage of Arm-based hardware hosted by GitHub to build and deploy their release assets anywhere Arm architecture is used. These runners are priced at 37% less than our x64 Linux and Windows runners.

The Arm64 runners are fully managed by GitHub with an image built by Arm containing all the tools needed for developers to get started. To view the list of installed software, give feedback, or to report issues with the image, head to the new partner runner images repository.

Arm runners are available to customers on our Team and Enterprise Cloud plans. We expect to begin offering Arm runners for open source and personal accounts by the end of the year.

Get Started

Customers can begin using these runners today by creating an Arm runner in their organization/enterprise, then updating the runs-on syntax in their Actions workflow file to call that runner name.
More information on how to set up Arm-hosted runners can be found in our public documentation.
To learn more about hosted runner per minute rates, see our rate table.

We’re eager to hear your feedback on these runners, share your thoughts on our GitHub Community Discussion.

See more

Today we are announcing exciting updates for GitHub Actions hosted runners, the cloud-based service that provides powerful virtual machines to developers and teams to integrate their automation and CI/CD workflows within GitHub. These updates mark a significant leap towards enhancing enterprise readiness for GitHub Actions and a testament to our commitment to simplifying the adoption of GitHub Actions hosted runners across all project sizes and complexities.

  • Azure private networking functionality, that was previously in public beta, is now generally available. This feature allows you to run your Actions workflows on GitHub-hosted runners that are connected to your Azure virtual network, without compromising on security or performance.
  • We are introducing additional runner SKUs to our hosted runner fleet including a 2 vCPU Linux runner and a 4 vCPU Windows runner, both equipped with auto-scaling and private networking functionalities. Both these SKUs are generally available starting today and are geared to support scenarios where smaller machine sizes suffice yet the demand for heightened security and performance persists.
  • Apple silicon (M1) hosted runners, specifically macOS L (12-core Intel) and macOS XL (M1 w/GPU hardware acceleration) which were previously in public beta, are now generally available.
  • We are also unveiling a GPU hosted runner (4 vCPUs, 1 T4 GPU) available in public beta. The GPU runners are available on Linux and Windows, and are enabled with auto-scaling and private networking functionalities. These runners empower teams working with machine learning models such as large language models (LLMs) or those requiring GPU graphic cards for game development to run their tests more efficiently as part of their automation or CI/CD process.

Get Started

  • Azure private networking for GitHub-hosted runners is available across Team and Enterprise plans. To get started, navigate to the ‘Hosted Compute Networking’ section within your Enterprise or Organization settings. For more details, consult our documentation. To request support for additional Azure regions, please fill out this form. As a note, Azure private networking for GitHub Codespaces continues to remain in beta.
  • The newly added 2 vCPU Linux and 4 vCPU Windows SKUs are generally available starting today across Team and Enterprise plans. To use these runners, create a GitHub-hosted runner by selecting the ‘2-core’ or ‘4-core’ size options in the runner creation flow.
  • macOS L and macOS XL runners are generally available across Free, Team and Enterprise plans, and can be used by updating the runs-on key to use one of the GitHub-defined macOS runner labels. To learn more about pricing for these SKUs, refer to our documentation.
  • GPU runners are available starting today in public beta across Team and Enterprise plans. To learn more about how to setup the runner, images, and pricing, refer to our documentation. To share your feedback and help us find the right additional GPU SKUs to support, please fill out this form.

We’re eager to hear your feedback on any and all of these functionalities. Share your thoughts on our GitHub Community Discussion.

See more

The Repository Actions Runners List is now generally available. With the Repository Actions Runnners List you can view all available runners right within the Actions tab, without needing access to repository or organization settings.

The runner types listed include Standard GitHub-hosted, Larger GitHub-hosted, Self-hosted, and Scale-sets.

Benefits of using the Repository Actions Runners List:

  • Visibility into all GitHub Actions runners: Users with repo:write access can now view which runner options are available for use within a repository, without needing to contact a Repo admin or an Organization owner to find runner label names.
  • Faster access to runner labels: Conveniently view and copy labels for all runners, making it straightforward to identify the type of runner you need and use it in a workflow.

To access the Repository Actions Runners List:

  1. Navigate to the main page of the repository.
  2. Click the "Actions" tab under your repository name.
  3. Under the "Management" section in the left sidebar, click on "Runners".
  4. Explore available runners within a repository and copy runner labels to use them in YAML workflow files.

Note: Enterprise and Organization owners can also create new runners from this page from the "New runner" button.
Repository Actions Runners List

This feature is available to users with:

  • Free and Pro Personal Accounts
  • Organizations on a Free Plan
  • Organizations on a Team Plan
  • Enterprises on a GitHub Enterprise Cloud plan (including Enterprise Managed Users)

Note: This feature is not available to users in Organizations on the GitHub Enterprise Server or Legacy plans.

If you have any feedback to help improve this experience, be sure to post it on our GitHub Community Discussion.

See more

Today we're announcing that Private Networking for GitHub-hosted runners with Azure Virtual Networks (VNET) is now in public beta. This feature allows GitHub Enterprise customers using Azure to integrate their GitHub-hosted runners directly into an Azure VNET under their Azure account.

Key Benefits

What sets this apart is the dual advantage it offers. On one hand, you can continue to enjoy the benefits of GitHub-managed resources. On the other hand, you gain full control over the networking policies applied to those resources. Once your GitHub-hosted runners are connected to your Azure VNET, your Actions workflows can securely access Azure services like Azure Storage and on-premises data sources such as artifactory through existing, pre-configured connections like VPN gateways and ExpressRoutes.

Security is also front and center in this update. Any existing or new networking policies, such as Network Security Group (NSG) rules, will automatically apply to GitHub-hosted runners giving platform administrators comprehensive control over network security.

To further simplify the management of Azure private networking settings across different business units, we're introducing Network Configurations. This feature allows administrators to consolidate various networking settings and assign them to runner groups based on specific operational needs. For example, production-grade runners can be configured with stricter networking policies using a dedicated Azure VNET, as opposed to runners used for testing or staging environments.

image

Starting today, Azure Private Networking and Network Configurations are available in public beta for GitHub Enterprise Cloud users. To get started, navigate to the 'Hosted Compute Networking' section within your Enterprise settings. For more details, consult our documentation.

We're eager to hear your feedback to further improve this feature. Share your thoughts on our GitHub Community Discussion.

See more

GitHub-hosted runners now support up to 1000 concurrent jobs for our 4 – 64 vCPU runners, enhancing their capability to handle large-scale CI/CD workloads.

Our runners are designed to automatically scale to meet your needs. The concurrency limit feature allows users to specify the maximum number of jobs that can run simultaneously to execute Actions workflows. Previously capped at 250, we've made backend improvements to now support a maximum of 1000 concurrent jobs for runners within the 4-64 vCPU range for Windows and Linux operating systems.

Enterprise or organization administrators can set this concurrency limit under the Auto-scaling setting. GitHub-hosted runners with 4 or more vCPUs are available on both the GitHub Team and Enterprise plans.

If you have any feedback to help improve this experience, be sure to post it on our GitHub Community Discussion.

See more

GitHub-hosted larger runners now support dual IP ranges when configured with Static IPs for the GitHub Enterprise Cloud plan.

Static IP enables Enterprise Cloud customers to choose whether a static IP address range will be assigned to their larger runner instances. This provides a fixed IP address range that can be added to your allow list for access to internal systems and can be used in conjunction with GitHub’s IP allow list to enable hosted actions runners and IP allow listing at the same time.

With dual IP ranges, larger runner instances will now receive two IP ranges instead of a single range. This enables runners to scale beyond the previously existing 500 concurrency limit. Additionally, the two IP ranges are created in different geographical locations, providing resiliency against regional outages.

Getting started

For newly created larger runner instances with the Static IP feature, 2 IP ranges will be assigned by default going forward and no additional action is required.

For existing larger runner instances that have Static IP configured:

  • GitHub will assign an additional IP range(s) that admins can view by heading to their existing static IP enabled larger runners.
  • Admins will have 30 days to update their existing firewalls or internal IP allowlists with the new IP ranges before GitHub starts utilizing the new ranges for the runners.
  • Admins will also receive an email guiding them to take the necessary steps for their existing static IP enabled larger runners to continue to function as they switch to the dual IP range functionality.

You can learn more about the Static IP feature by heading over to documentation. If you have any feedback to help improve this experience, be sure to post it on our GitHub Community Discussion.

See more

With the Repository Actions Runners List, you can now view all available runners in the Actions tab of a repository. This feature is now in public beta and will be gradually released in the upcoming weeks.

The runner types listed include Standard GitHub-hosted, Larger GitHub-hosted (for faster builds), Self-hosted, and Scale-sets.

Repository Actions Runners List

For some benefits of using the Repository Actions Runners List:

  • Visibility across all GitHub Actions runners: Users with repo:write access can now view runner options without needing to rely on internal documentation or contacting a Repo admin or an Organization owner for runner label names.
  • Faster access to runner labels: Quickly view and copy labels for all runners, making it straightforward to identify the type of runner you need and use it in a workflow.

To access the Repository Actions Runners List:

  1. Navigate to the main page of the repository.
  2. Click the “Actions” tab under your repository name.
  3. Under the “Management” section in the left sidebar, click on “Runners”.
  4. Explore the available runners for the repository and copy runner labels as needed.

Note: Enterprise and Organization owners can also create new runners from this page from the “New runner” button.

This feature is available to users with:

  • Free and Pro Personal Accounts
  • Free Organizations
  • Paid Organizations on the Team and GitHub Enterprise Cloud plans

Note: This feature is not currently available to users in Organizations on the GitHub Enterprise Server and Legacy plans, or Enterprise Managed Users.

If you have any feedback to help improve this experience, be sure to post it on our GitHub Community Discussion.

See more

Today, we are announcing that larger hosted runners for GitHub Actions are generally available for paid Team and Enterprise Cloud plans! This feature has been in public beta since September of 2022 where customers have been using it in production to run their CI/CD jobs faster and with more flexibility.

larger runner machine sizes

The new larger runners provide new capabilities:

  • Larger Linux and Windows machines: This allows development teams to use machine sizes up to 64 vCPUs with 256 GB of RAM, and 2 TB of SSD storage to support their on-demand CI/CD jobs and other workflows. Larger runners are charged by the job minute for both private and public repositories and do not consume included minutes.
  • Static IP address to enable secure access to your resources: Enterprise Cloud customers can now choose whether a static IP address range will be assigned to their larger runner instances. This provides a fixed IP address range that you can add to your allow list for access to internal systems. You can also use this in conjunction with GitHub’s IP allow list to enable hosted actions runners and IP allow listing at the same time.
  • Administrative control over access to larger runners and concurrency: Your administrators can decide who has access to larger machine sizes and at what concurrency, providing guard rails on spending.

You can learn about the larger runner per job minute pricing by checking the current pricing documentation and learn more about this feature by digging into the documentation.

If you have any feedback to help improve this experience, be sure to post it on our GitHub Community Discussion.

See more