Delete forked repo from GitHub

Question

I'm starting with git and GitHub and there's a project I'm watching on GitHub. I unintentionally clicked to fork it. Now it appears as a new project to me.

I have some doubts about it:

I know if commit or do another thing to my forked repo, it will be updated, but the updated code will take effect only after the project's author request the pull. Right?
If I go to admin panel on GitHub there's a delete option. If I delete it as the option above, will it make any effect in the original one or not?

I'd like to delete it. By now I'm just studying the code and don't really need the fork.

To clarify the terminology around pull requests: you make a change and request that the author pulls that change into their repository. You *request* and the author *pulls*. — Douglas Hill, May 09 '15 at 01:30

score 1338 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 19 '21 at 16:25

By far the easiest way is to log in GitHub account:

Click to your repository for example yourUsername/yourRepository for example mbaric/zpropertyz.
Then in the main toolbar of GitHub click on Settings
Scroll to the bottom of the page to the section called Danger Zone and you will find Delete this repository button
When you click it another pop up will appear here you need to type in your Github username and the name of your repository in this format gitHubUsername/nameOfTheRepository and click on the button below which says: I understand the consequences, delete the repository
If you are having trouble doing it, below are the images that can be checked…

2020-01-15 - Here are images. Enjoy.

New instructions are here: https://help.github.com/articles/deleting-a-repository/ — Pacerier, Aug 13 '15 at 10:27

score 388 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 02 '12 at 23:40

388

Deleting it will do nothing to the original project. Editing it will only edit your fork on your repo page.

answered Jul 02 '12 at 23:40

Conner

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It would be horrible security bug if you could affect someone else's project by forking it and then deleting the fork. – Keith Thompson May 18 '13 at 21:51
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What happens if the original project gets deleted? Will my fork still work? Does it get deleted too? – unom Aug 31 '14 at 18:50
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@unmircea Yes, your fork will still work: it just won't be able to merge "upstream". – bishop Sep 27 '14 at 03:08
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I see. One more quick question. When I fork a project what happens when the initial project get's updated and so on. Does it flow downstream automatically? – unom Sep 27 '14 at 10:40
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@unmircea No, you have pull down changes from the original project – Conner Jun 06 '15 at 18:41
I've always found it better to clone a project locally, and then push the clone to a new GitHub repo. This avoids a lot of the oddities and annoyances associated with GitHub forking. – William T Froggard Dec 12 '17 at 09:01
FYI, when you delete a fork, and you want to later fork the original master repo again, you cant. It says the fork exists, although it doesnt. – John Little Aug 14 '18 at 16:23
@KeithThompson, re "_It would be horrible security bug if you could affect someone else's project by forking it and then deleting the fork._" Not if you have access to both repositories/accounts, right? (It would be bad, but I wouldn't consider it a security bug, unless I'm missing the point here.) – wovano Nov 09 '21 at 08:32
@wovano I meant any random user's repo, one to which you ordinarily wouldn't have write access. – Keith Thompson Nov 10 '21 at 00:01

score 30 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 19 '15 at 05:13

Just delete the forked repo from your GitHub account.

https://help.github.com/articles/deleting-a-repository/

If I go to admin panel on GitHub there's a delete option. If I delete it as the option above, will it make any effect in the original one or not?

It wont make any changes in the original one; cos, its your repo now.

score 15 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 06 '18 at 08:35

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Sweet and simple:

Open the repository
Navigate to settings
Scroll to the bottom of the page
Click on delete
Confirm names of the Repository to delete
Click on delete

edited Sep 06 '18 at 08:35

Pang

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answered Sep 06 '18 at 08:28

Gurjot Singh

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score 14 · Answer 5 · answered May 19 '16 at 16:45

There will not be any harm deleting the forked repositories. You can again fork that. It won't change the original code. The flow is like this...

1) You fork a repository. Just think of this as another copy of code which you can access or make changes to. The url of this repository will be of the form https://github.com/your-user-name/original-repo.

2) You make some changes to that in your local machine and push them. Now the copy you created will be updated, but not the original one from which you have forked your repo.

3) If you want the changes you added to your forked repo to be applied to original repo(this may be helpful to the people who are organizing the repo) then you have to create a pull request which you can do through UI. Then if they like your contribution, they will merge that with their code.

Generally this is what open source organizations do.

score 12 · Answer 6 · edited Nov 09 '21 at 08:37

Deleting your forked repository will not affect the master (original) repository.

Like I have shown an example by deleting a forked repo.

And no changes to the original repository.

The master repo is something like an original one.

Forking is same as creating a xerox copy of the original one. Even if you get your xeroxed paper damaged, will it be that the original document also gets damaged? Obviously No.

So it's the same as that.

score 4 · Answer 7 · edited Nov 10 '16 at 12:30

Answer is NO. It won't affect the original/main repository where you forked from. (Functionally, it will be incorrect if such an access is provided to a non-owner).

Just wanted to add this though.

Warning: It will delete the local commits and branches you created on your forked repo. So, before deleting make sure there is a backup of that code with you if it is important.

Best way would be getting a git backup of forked repo using:

git bundle

or other methods that are familiar.

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 05 '17 at 15:44

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select project to delete->settings->buttom click delete button->enter name of the repositories

answered Apr 05 '17 at 15:44

Nilavarasi Ashika

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score 4 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 30 '17 at 07:20

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Select repo->Settings->(scroll down)Delete repo

answered Dec 30 '17 at 07:20

Ashik Azeez

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score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 22 '22 at 01:08

A simple way to delete a repository on github:

Open the repository you want to delete
Then click settings
After that scroll to the bottom of the page
Click delete
To confirm deletion, you need to write down the your github username and repository name that you want to delete
After that, click "I understand the consequences, delete this repository"
And the repository was successfully deleted

score 2 · Answer 11 · edited May 14 '19 at 13:44

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No, it will not affect your original repository, just make sure that the repo address looks like "youGitName/TheRepository" and not like "OtherPersonGitName/TheRepo".

edited May 14 '19 at 13:44

Robert Columbia

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answered May 14 '19 at 13:42

Bruno Maia

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score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 03 '21 at 06:05

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Open the repository you want to delete on github and press the settings tab. Scroll to the end of the page and click on delete repository. Write the name of the Repository to confirm and click on delete like this one:

answered Mar 03 '21 at 06:05

Shoaib Khalil

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score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Apr 29 '21 at 11:15

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I was also looking for a solution to this problem, especially for bulk deletes. I finally used this solution - https://github.com/yangshun/delete-github-forks.

Worked like a charm!!

answered Apr 29 '21 at 11:15

indranil32

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score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Sep 23 '18 at 02:22

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I had also faced this issue. NO it will not affect your original repo by anyway. just simply delete it by entering the name of forked repo

answered Sep 23 '18 at 02:22

SHANKAR YADAV

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score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Jan 15 '20 at 05:55

There are multiple answers pointing out, that editing/deleting the fork doesn't affect the original repository. Those answers are correct. I will try to add something to that answer and explain why in my answer.

A fork is just a copy of a repository with a fork relationship.

As you can copy a file or a directory locally to another place and delete the copy, it won't affect the original.

Fork relationship means, that you can easily tell github that it should send a pull request (with your changes) from your fork to the original repository because github knows that your repository is a copy of the original repository(with a few changes on both sides).

Just for anybodies information, a pull request(or merge request) contains code that has been changed in the fork and is submitted to the original repository. Users with push/write access(may be different in other git servers) on the original repository are allowed to merge the changes of the pull request into the original repository(copy the changes of the PR to the original repository).

Delete forked repo from GitHub

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