Delete objects

This page shows you how to delete objects from your buckets in Cloud Storage.

Caution: By default, Cloud Storage retains soft-deleted objects for a duration of seven days. If you have accidentally deleted the objects, you can restore these soft-deleted objects during this duration. However, if you have disabled soft delete for your bucket, you cannot recover deleted objects. For more information on how to prevent accidental data deletion, see Options for controlling data lifecycles.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to delete objects, ask your administrator to grant you the Storage Object User (roles/storage.objectUser) IAM role for the bucket that contains the objects you want to delete.

If you plan on using the Google Cloud console to complete the tasks on this page, ask your administrator to grant you the Storage Admin (roles/storage.admin) role instead of the Storage Object User (roles/storage.objectUser) role, or the Viewer (roles/viewer) basic role in addition to the Storage Object User (roles/storage.objectUser) role.

These roles contain the permissions required to delete objects. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

• storage.objects.delete
• storage.objects.list
  • This permission is only needed when using the Google Cloud console, or when using the --recursive flag or wildcards in Google Cloud CLI.
• storage.buckets.list
  • This permission is only needed when using the Google Cloud console to perform the instructions on this page.

You can also get these permissions with other predefined roles or custom roles.

For information about granting roles on buckets, see Use IAM with buckets.

Delete an object

Note: Deleting data might incur early deletion charges if the data was originally stored as Nearline storage, Coldline storage, or Archive storage. Also note that if you have enabled Object Versioning for your bucket, the original object remains in your bucket until it is explicitly deleted using its generation number.

Complete the following steps to delete objects from one of your Cloud Storage buckets:

Console

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud Storage Buckets page.
   

   Go to Buckets

2. In the list of buckets, click the name of the bucket that contains the objects you want to delete.

   The Bucket details page opens, with the Objects tab selected.

3. Navigate to the objects, which may be located in a folder.

4. Click the checkbox for each object you want to delete.

   You can also click the checkbox for folders, which will delete all objects contained in that folder.

5. Click the Delete button.

6. Click Delete in the dialog that appears.

If you delete many objects at once, you can track deletion progress by clicking the Notifications icon in the Google Cloud console. The Google Cloud console can bulk delete up to several million objects and does so in the background.

To learn how to get detailed error information about failed Cloud Storage operations in the Google Cloud console, see Troubleshooting.

Command line

Use the Google Cloud CLI command gcloud storage rm:

gcloud storage rm gs://BUCKET_NAME/OBJECT_NAME

Where:

• BUCKET_NAME is the name of the bucket containing the object you want to delete. For example, my-bucket.
• OBJECT_NAME is the name of the object you want to delete. For example, pets/dog.png.

If successful, the response is similar to the following example:

Removing objects:
Removing gs://example-bucket/file.txt...
  Completed 1/1

Note: You can delete groups of objects that have the same prefix, such as objects whose names mimic a folder structure, by using the --recursive flag. For example: gcloud storage rm --recursive gs://my-bucket/dir/

Client libraries

C++

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

To authenticate to Cloud Storage, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for client libraries.

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

  if (!status.ok()) throw std::runtime_error(status.message());
  std::cout << "Deleted " << object_name << " in bucket " << bucket_name
            << "\n";
}

C#

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

To authenticate to Cloud Storage, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for client libraries.

using Google.Cloud.Storage.V1;
using System;

public class DeleteFileSample
{
    public void DeleteFile(
        string bucketName = "your-unique-bucket-name",
        string objectName = "your-object-name")
    {
        var storage = StorageClient.Create();
        storage.DeleteObject(bucketName, objectName);
        Console.WriteLine($"Deleted {objectName}.");
    }
}

Go

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

To authenticate to Cloud Storage, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for client libraries.

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"io"
	"time"

	"cloud.google.com/go/storage"
)

// deleteFile removes specified object.
func deleteFile(w io.Writer, bucket, object string) error {
	// bucket := "bucket-name"
	// object := "object-name"
	ctx := context.Background()
	client, err := storage.NewClient(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("storage.NewClient: %w", err)
	}
	defer client.Close()

	ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(ctx, time.Second*10)
	defer cancel()

	o := client.Bucket(bucket).Object(object)

	// Optional: set a generation-match precondition to avoid potential race
	// conditions and data corruptions. The request to delete the file is aborted
	// if the object's generation number does not match your precondition.
	attrs, err := o.Attrs(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("object.Attrs: %w", err)
	}
	o = o.If(storage.Conditions{GenerationMatch: attrs.Generation})

	if err := o.Delete(ctx); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("Object(%q).Delete: %w", object, err)
	}
	fmt.Fprintf(w, "Blob %v deleted.\n", object)
	return nil
}

Java

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

To authenticate to Cloud Storage, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for client libraries.

import com.google.cloud.storage.Blob;
import com.google.cloud.storage.BlobId;
import com.google.cloud.storage.Storage;
import com.google.cloud.storage.StorageOptions;

public class DeleteObject {
  public static void deleteObject(String projectId, String bucketName, String objectName) {
    // The ID of your GCP project
    // String projectId = "your-project-id";

    // The ID of your GCS bucket
    // String bucketName = "your-unique-bucket-name";

    // The ID of your GCS object
    // String objectName = "your-object-name";

    Storage storage = StorageOptions.newBuilder().setProjectId(projectId).build().getService();
    Blob blob = storage.get(bucketName, objectName);
    if (blob == null) {
      System.out.println("The object " + objectName + " wasn't found in " + bucketName);
      return;
    }
    BlobId idWithGeneration = blob.getBlobId();
    // Deletes the blob specified by its id. When the generation is present and non-null it will be
    // specified in the request.
    // If versioning is enabled on the bucket and the generation is present in the delete request,
    // only the version of the object with the matching generation will be deleted.
    // If instead you want to delete the current version, the generation should be dropped by
    // performing the following.
    // BlobId idWithoutGeneration =
    //    BlobId.of(idWithGeneration.getBucket(), idWithGeneration.getName());
    // storage.delete(idWithoutGeneration);
    storage.delete(idWithGeneration);

    System.out.println("Object " + objectName + " was permanently deleted from " + bucketName);
  }
}

Node.js

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

To authenticate to Cloud Storage, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for client libraries.

/**
 * TODO(developer): Uncomment the following lines before running the sample.
 */
// The ID of your GCS bucket
// const bucketName = 'your-unique-bucket-name';

// The ID of your GCS file
// const fileName = 'your-file-name';

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

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

// Optional:
// Set a generation-match precondition to avoid potential race conditions
// and data corruptions. The request to delete is aborted if the object's
// generation number does not match your precondition. For a destination
// object that does not yet exist, set the ifGenerationMatch precondition to 0
// If the destination object already exists in your bucket, set instead a
// generation-match precondition using its generation number.
const deleteOptions = {
  ifGenerationMatch: generationMatchPrecondition,
};
async function deleteFile() {
  await storage.bucket(bucketName).file(fileName).delete(deleteOptions);

  console.log(`gs://${bucketName}/${fileName} deleted`);
}

deleteFile().catch(console.error);

PHP

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

To authenticate to Cloud Storage, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for client libraries.

use Google\Cloud\Storage\StorageClient;

/**
 * Delete an object.
 *
 * @param string $bucketName The name of your Cloud Storage bucket.
 *        (e.g. 'my-bucket')
 * @param string $objectName The name of your Cloud Storage object.
 *        (e.g. 'my-object')
 */
function delete_object(string $bucketName, string $objectName): void
{
    $storage = new StorageClient();
    $bucket = $storage->bucket($bucketName);
    $object = $bucket->object($objectName);
    $object->delete();
    printf('Deleted gs://%s/%s' . PHP_EOL, $bucketName, $objectName);
}

Python

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

To authenticate to Cloud Storage, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for client libraries.

from google.cloud import storage


def delete_blob(bucket_name, blob_name):
    """Deletes a blob from the bucket."""
    # bucket_name = "your-bucket-name"
    # blob_name = "your-object-name"

    storage_client = storage.Client()

    bucket = storage_client.bucket(bucket_name)
    blob = bucket.blob(blob_name)
    generation_match_precondition = None

    # Optional: set a generation-match precondition to avoid potential race conditions
    # and data corruptions. The request to delete is aborted if the object's
    # generation number does not match your precondition.
    blob.reload()  # Fetch blob metadata to use in generation_match_precondition.
    generation_match_precondition = blob.generation

    blob.delete(if_generation_match=generation_match_precondition)

    print(f"Blob {blob_name} deleted.")

Ruby

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

To authenticate to Cloud Storage, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for client libraries.

def delete_file bucket_name:, file_name:
  # The ID of your GCS bucket
  # bucket_name = "your-unique-bucket-name"

  # The ID of your GCS object
  # file_name = "your-file-name"

  require "google/cloud/storage"

  storage = Google::Cloud::Storage.new
  bucket  = storage.bucket bucket_name, skip_lookup: true
  file    = bucket.file file_name

  file.delete

  puts "Deleted #{file.name}"
end

REST APIs

JSON API

Note: Each deletion request sent to the JSON API can contain only a single object to delete.

1. Have gcloud CLI installed and initialized, which lets you generate an access token for the Authorization header.

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

   curl -X DELETE \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     "https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b/BUCKET_NAME/o/OBJECT_NAME"

   Where:

   • BUCKET_NAME is the name of the bucket containing the object you want to delete. For example, my-bucket.
   • OBJECT_NAME is the URL-encoded name of the object you want to delete. For example, pets/dog.png, URL-encoded as pets%2Fdog.png.

XML API

Note: Each deletion request sent to the XML API can contain only a single object to delete.

1. Have gcloud CLI installed and initialized, which lets you generate an access token for the Authorization header.

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

   curl -X DELETE \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     "https://storage.googleapis.com/BUCKET_NAME/OBJECT_NAME"

   Where:

   • BUCKET_NAME is the name of the bucket containing the object you want to delete. For example, my-bucket.
   • OBJECT_NAME is the URL-encoded name of the object you want to delete. For example, pets/dog.png, URL-encoded as pets%2Fdog.png.

Delete objects in bulk

If you want to bulk delete a hundred thousand or more objects, avoid using gcloud storage, as the process takes a long time to complete. Instead, consider one of the following options:

• The Object Lifecycle Management feature can delete any number of objects. To bulk delete objects in your bucket using this feature, set a lifecycle configuration rule on your bucket where the condition has Age set to 0 days and the action is set to delete. Once you set the rule, Cloud Storage performs the bulk delete asynchronously.

• The Google Cloud console is also a recommended option when deleting up to one million objects. Once you initiate such a deletion request, the process occurs in the background. You can check the status of your bulk deletion by clicking the Notifications button () in the Google Cloud console header.

• When using certain client libraries or when using the JSON API directly, you can batch your deletion requests to reduce the number of HTTP connections you need to make.

What's next

• Learn about the Object Versioning feature.
• Learn about the Object Lifecycle Management feature.
• Learn how to delete a bucket.