Deleting buckets

This page shows you how to delete Cloud Storage buckets. For an overview of buckets, read the Key Terms.

To delete a bucket:

Console

Warning: Deleting a bucket also deletes any objects stored within the bucket. These objects cannot be recovered. For tools to prevent accidental data deletion, see Deleting data best practices.

1. Open the Cloud Storage browser in the Google Cloud Console.
   Open the Cloud Storage browser

2. Select the checkbox of the bucket you want to delete.

3. Click Delete.

4. In the overlay window that appears, confirm you want to delete the bucket and its contents by clicking Delete.

Note: If you have a large number of objects in your buckets, the delete operation may take longer than usual to complete.

gsutil

Warning: The following command also deletes all objects stored within the bucket. These objects cannot be recovered. If you want to avoid accidentally deleting objects, use the gsutil rb command, which only deletes a bucket if the bucket is empty.

Use the gsutil rm command with the -r flag:

gsutil rm -r gs://[BUCKET_NAME]

Where [BUCKET_NAME] is the name of the bucket to delete. For example, my-bucket.

The response looks like the following example:

Removing gs://[BUCKET_NAME]/...

Note: If you have a large number of objects in your buckets, the delete operation may take longer than usual to complete.

Code samples

C++

For more information, see the Cloud Storage C++ API reference documentation .

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namespace gcs = google::cloud::storage;
[](gcs::Client client, std::string bucket_name) {
  google::cloud::Status status = client.DeleteBucket(bucket_name);

  if (!status.ok()) {
    throw std::runtime_error(status.message());
  }

  std::cout << "The bucket " << bucket_name << " was deleted successfully.\n";
}

C#

For more information, see the Cloud Storage C# API reference documentation .

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private void DeleteBucket(string bucketName)
{
    var storage = StorageClient.Create();
    storage.DeleteBucket(bucketName);
    Console.WriteLine($"Deleted {bucketName}.");
}

Go

For more information, see the Cloud Storage Go API reference documentation .

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if err := client.Bucket(bucketName).Delete(ctx); err != nil {
	return err
}

Java

For more information, see the Cloud Storage Java API reference documentation .

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boolean deleted = bucket.delete(BucketSourceOption.metagenerationMatch());
if (deleted) {
  // the bucket was deleted
} else {
  // the bucket was not found
}

Node.js

For more information, see the Cloud Storage Node.js API reference documentation .

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// Imports the Google Cloud client library
const {Storage} = require('@google-cloud/storage');

// Creates a client
const storage = new Storage();

/**
 * TODO(developer): Uncomment the following line before running the sample.
 */
// const bucketName = 'Name of a bucket, e.g. my-bucket';

// Deletes the bucket
await storage.bucket(bucketName).delete();

console.log(`Bucket ${bucketName} deleted.`);

PHP

For more information, see the Cloud Storage PHP API reference documentation .

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use Google\Cloud\Storage\StorageClient;

/**
 * Delete a Cloud Storage Bucket.
 *
 * @param string $bucketName the name of the bucket to delete.
 *
 * @return void
 */
function delete_bucket($bucketName)
{
    $storage = new StorageClient();
    $bucket = $storage->bucket($bucketName);
    $bucket->delete();
    printf('Bucket deleted: %s' . PHP_EOL, $bucket->name());
}

Python

For more information, see the Cloud Storage Python API reference documentation .

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from google.cloud import storage


def delete_bucket(bucket_name):
    """Deletes a bucket. The bucket must be empty."""
    # bucket_name = "your-bucket-name"

    storage_client = storage.Client()

    bucket = storage_client.get_bucket(bucket_name)
    bucket.delete()

    print("Bucket {} deleted".format(bucket.name))

Ruby

For more information, see the Cloud Storage Ruby API reference documentation .

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# project_id  = "Your Google Cloud project ID"
# bucket_name = "Name of your Google Cloud Storage bucket to delete"

require "google/cloud/storage"

storage = Google::Cloud::Storage.new project_id: project_id
bucket  = storage.bucket bucket_name

bucket.delete

puts "Deleted bucket: #{bucket.name}"

REST APIs

JSON API

Note: Your bucket must be empty before you can delete it.

1. Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.

2. Use cURL to call the JSON API with a DELETE Bucket request:

   curl -X DELETE -H "Authorization: Bearer [OAUTH2_TOKEN]" \
     "https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b/[BUCKET_NAME]"

   Where:

   • [OAUTH2_TOKEN] is the access token you generated in Step 1.
   • [BUCKET_NAME] is the name of the bucket to delete. For example, my-bucket.

If successful, the response contains a 204 status code.

XML API

Note: Your bucket must be empty before you can delete it.

1. Get an authorization access token from the OAuth 2.0 Playground. Configure the playground to use your own OAuth credentials.

2. Use cURL to call the XML API with a DELETE Bucket request:

   curl -X DELETE -H "Authorization: Bearer [OAUTH2_TOKEN]" \
     "https://storage.googleapis.com/[BUCKET_NAME]"

   Where:

   • [OAUTH2_TOKEN] is the access token you generated in Step 1.
   • [BUCKET_NAME] is the name of the bucket to delete. For example, my-bucket.

Whats next

• Create a bucket.
• Move or rename a bucket.
• Delete an object.