How to delete Inactive Repositories from Container Registry programatically?

Question

How to delete Inactive Repositories from Container Registry programatically?

Guilherme Matheus 140 Microsoft Employee

I don't have much experience with Container Registry, but we were flagged internally in this image <masked>because of Ubuntu Security Notification for libxml2 Vulnerability (USN-7743-1), with this :

If I open my Container Registry I can see that container is in Inactive state:

User's image

Question I have:

Does it mean I can safely delete?
Also, the main question, how can I programmatically delete these inactive images? I did not find any REST API command, or CLI or anything. This would prevent any future problem.
Will only show Inactive images in there or might have active images as well? Otherwise I can safely delete everyone all of them

I am asking this last question, because when I execute the CLI show command I cannot see the streaming (Inactive) state:

{
  "changeableAttributes": {
    "deleteEnabled": true,
    "listEnabled": true,
    "readEnabled": true,
    "writeEnabled": true
  },
  "createdTime": "2025-09-09T12:12:02.0139514Z",
  "imageName": "<masked>",
  "lastUpdateTime": "2025-09-09T12:12:02.9365277Z",
  "manifestCount": 1,
  "registry": "<masked>",
  "tagCount": 2
}

Ankit Yadav 6,760 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-10-16T12:24:32.2566667+00:00

Hello Guilherme Matheus,

If the query has been resolved, please take a moment to accept answers and upvote it 👍 to make it helpful to the community.

Thank you for helping to improve Microsoft Q&A!

Answer accepted by question author

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Ankit Yadav 6,760 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-10-16T12:24:32.2566667+00:00

Hello Guilherme Matheus,

If the query has been resolved, please take a moment to accept answers and upvote it 👍 to make it helpful to the community.

Thank you for helping to improve Microsoft Q&A!

Answer 1

Ankit Yadav 6,760 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hello Guilherme Matheus,

The inactive value you are seeing is related to the feature called Artifact Streaming. To know more about the feature, see here: https://v4.hkg1.meaqua.org/en-us/azure/container-registry/container-registry-artifact-streaming?pivots=development-environment-azure-cli

Answering your questions accordingly,

Does it mean I can safely delete?
The inactive value doesn't mean exactly that they are not used anywhere at all, in general scenario you should review if your any of the services/projects are using that image or if you are part of a team, check with your teammates if they require those images and if it's concluded it's not required, you are good to delete the images.

However, as discussed offline, here the images are being pushed to ACR from an AML service and is not being used anywhere, you are good to delete the images.

Also, the main question, how can I programmatically delete these inactive images? I did not find any REST API command, or CLI or anything. This would prevent any future problem. Yes, you can delete the images by first view the repository details by listing out the repository using Azure CLI commands as shown here: https://v4.hkg1.meaqua.org/en-us/cli/azure/acr/repository?view=azure-cli-latest#az-acr-repository-list-examples
Example:
```
  az acr repository list -n myregistry 
```
then use delete command as shown here: https://v4.hkg1.meaqua.org/en-us/cli/azure/acr/repository?view=azure-cli-latest#az-acr-repository-delete-examples
Example
```
  az acr repository delete -n myregistry --image hello-world:latest
```
Will only show Inactive images in there or might have active images as well? Otherwise I can safely delete everyone all of them.
It'll show active only if you have enabled artifact streaming,
View of the image before artifact streaming:

View of the image after enabling artifact streaming: User's image

Himanshu Shekhar 1,860 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-10-16T06:49:38.8333333+00:00

Guilherme Matheus - Could you please provide an update on this post?

Kindly let us know if the suggested steps helps or you need further assistance on this issue
Guilherme Matheus 140 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2025-10-16T12:11:18.52+00:00

Hi @Himanshu Shekhar , the update is not on me, it's on @Ankit Yadav , the main thread is how to filter by streaming Inactive or Active on these image list.

Ankit Yadav 6,760 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Additionally, if needed to check the details if the Artifact streaming is enabled for which images in your ACR repository,

you can use commands as below:

az acr artifact-streaming show -n myregistry --repository MyRepo

reference: https://v4.hkg1.meaqua.org/en-us/cli/azure/acr/artifact-streaming?view=azure-cli-latest#az-acr-artifact-streaming-show-examples

Test Example: User's image

Explanation:
If you see the output convertPushedImages as false

that would mean that the Artifact Streaming is not active for that image in the repository.

User's image

To check it programmatically using Azure CLI, I've written below bash script and it worked out for me perfectly:

note: make sure to add your ACR name in ACR_NAME variable

#!/bin/bash  
ACR_NAME="YourACRName" 
echo "ACR Artifact Streaming Status Report"
echo "Registry: $ACR_NAME"
echo "Date: $(date)"
echo ""
# Get all repositories
REPOSITORIES=$(az acr repository list --name $ACR_NAME --output tsv)
if [ -z "$REPOSITORIES" ]; then
   echo "No repositories found in ACR: $ACR_NAME"
   exit 1
fi
echo "Repository Name          Artifact Streaming  Image Count"
echo "--------------------------------------------------------"
TOTAL_REPOS=0
ENABLED_COUNT=0
DISABLED_COUNT=0
TOTAL_IMAGES=0
for REPO in $REPOSITORIES; do
   TOTAL_REPOS=$((TOTAL_REPOS + 1))
   # Get repository image count
   IMAGE_COUNT=$(az acr repository show --name $ACR_NAME --repository $REPO --query "manifestCount" -o tsv 2>/dev/null || echo "0")
   TOTAL_IMAGES=$((TOTAL_IMAGES + IMAGE_COUNT))
   # Check artifact streaming status
   STREAMING_STATUS=$(az acr artifact-streaming show -n $ACR_NAME --repository $REPO --query "convertPushedImages" -o tsv 2>/dev/null || echo "false")
   if [ "$STREAMING_STATUS" = "true" ]; then
       STATUS="Enabled"
       ENABLED_COUNT=$((ENABLED_COUNT + 1))
   else
       STATUS="Disabled"
       DISABLED_COUNT=$((DISABLED_COUNT + 1))
   fi
   printf "%-23s %-19s %-12s\n" "$REPO" "$STATUS" "$IMAGE_COUNT"
done
echo "--------------------------------------------------------"
echo "Total Repositories: $TOTAL_REPOS"
echo "Artifact Streaming Enabled: $ENABLED_COUNT"
echo "Artifact Streaming Disabled: $DISABLED_COUNT"
echo "Total Images: $TOTAL_IMAGES"

and this will give you an output as below:

User's image

which matches to the view I see in Azure Portal GUI for my images in the Repository:

Guilherme Matheus 140 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2025-10-16T12:38:52.7733333+00:00

Thank you very much for providing this rich and detailed answer, this makes a difference!

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