Delete old files automatically

Last updated: October 27, 2026

Set rules that delete old generations and uploads every night, so your workspaces stay under their storage limit without anyone cleaning up by hand.

Before you start

Auto-delete is part of the Enterprise plan, on the workspace or on a parent workspace above it. On other plans the Auto-delete tab shows what it does and how to contact sales.
You need to be a workspace admin.
Decide what your studio keeps. Rules keep files that have a label, are in a folder, or that someone liked or pinned, unless you untick those options. Label your finals before you turn auto-delete on. See Label your assets and filter by label.

Set the rules

Open the workspace menu, choose Settings, then Storage under Workspace, and open the Auto-delete tab.
Turn on Delete old files automatically. In Rule 1, choose an Age (or Custom… for a number of days, weeks or months), an Origin (Generated only, Uploaded only, or both) and what to keep under Keep files that. Select Add rule to add more; a file any rule reaches is deleted.
In a parent workspace, turn on Every workspace under this one must follow these rules to apply them to every child workspace and stop their admins changing them. Turn on Send admins a summary after each run to get a summary whenever a run deletes something.
Select Preview to see how many files, and how much space, the rules would delete if they ran now, with the largest of them listed.
Select Save rules. The confirmation repeats what the rules would delete; select Save rules again to turn them on.
To run the rules straight away instead of waiting for the night, select Run now. The run appears under Recent runs.

How auto-delete works

When it runs

Saved rules run once a night, starting the night you save them. Each run deletes at most 50,000 files; if the rules reach more, the run shows Stopped at limit and the next night carries on.

What it never deletes

A file used by a reference set, a workflow, a skill, a template or another workspace is always kept, as is anything public. Kept in use under Recent runs counts the files a run kept for that reason.

Where deleted files go

Deleted files go to Trash on the Storage page, where an admin can restore them for 29 days. Every run is recorded in the workspace's audit log.

Parent and child workspaces

A child workspace with no rules of its own follows its parent's rules, and says so on its Auto-delete tab. Its admins can save their own rules to replace them, unless the parent requires every workspace under it to follow its rules. Clear rules removes a workspace's own rules, so it goes back to following its parent.

Check that it works

The morning after you save the rules, open the Auto-delete tab. Recent runs shows a run started by Nightly schedule, with what it deleted and kept.
Open Trash to see the files it deleted, and restore any you need.

Production tips

Start long, then tighten. Begin with Older than 6 months on Generated only, watch a few runs, then shorten the age once the team trusts what is kept.
One rule per kind of work. Exploration drafts can go after a month while uploaded source art stays for a year: make one rule for each, with its own age and origin.
Set it once for the studio. Save the rules in the parent workspace and require every workspace under it to follow them, so each game team's workspace follows the same retention policy. See Parent and child workspaces.
Make "keep" a habit. Agree a label for approved assets, or a folder for finals, so artists protect their work as they go rather than before each run.

If something goes wrong

The controls are greyed out and a note names another workspace. A parent workspace requires its rules here. Ask that workspace's admins to change them.
"Auto-delete is part of the Enterprise plan". Neither this workspace nor a parent above it is on the Enterprise plan. Contact the Layer sales team to add it.
A run shows Failed. Nothing more is deleted until the next run, and files already deleted are in Trash. Select Run now to try again; if it fails again, contact support.
Preview says "At least". The rules reach more files than a preview counts. Saving them is safe: each night deletes up to the run limit and the next night carries on.