GitHub Actions Deprecations: What Is Breaking and How to Fix It

By Kaveh Alemi·Latchkey

GitHub deprecates runtimes, commands, and images on a schedule. Stay ahead of the warnings before they become failures.

Deprecations start as warnings and end as broken builds. This tracker lists the recurring ones and the fix for each. Check the GitHub changelog for exact dates.

Recurring deprecations

Deprecation	Fix
Node 16 actions runtime	Upgrade actions to versions running on Node 20
`save-state` / `set-output` commands	Write to `$GITHUB_STATE` / `$GITHUB_OUTPUT` files
Older runner images (e.g. ubuntu-20.04)	Move to `ubuntu-latest` or a pinned current image
upload-artifact/download-artifact v3	Migrate to v4 (note the breaking changes)
Deprecated action major versions	Bump `uses:` to the current major

How to stay ahead

Watch for deprecation warnings in your run logs and treat them as work, not noise.
Use Dependabot to bump action versions automatically.
Pin to majors (@v4) so you get fixes without surprise breaks.

Pinning and supply-chain hygiene

A third-party action runs arbitrary code with access to your workflow token. Version tags are mutable, so @v4 can change under you without any commit in your repository.

.github/workflows/ci.yml

# mutable: the tag can be repointed at any time
- uses: some/action@v4

# immutable: pin to the commit SHA, with the version in a comment
- uses: some/action@e2b3f4a5c6d7e8f9a0b1c2d3e4f5a6b7c8d9e0f1  # v4.1.2

Frequently asked questions

GitHub Actions Deprecations: What Is Breaking and How to Fix It?