Request server-side garbage collection for all repositories in workspace, Please!

Hi @alexvonchrismar 

I hear you. We the community can’t do that. We don’t have access. You must contact support team https://support.atlassian.com 

Once you contacted support and if you sorted, please share the findings and details so it can help others. 

Just a thought. Even though you successfully cleaned your history and force-pushed, Bitbucket keeps hidden references like pull requests references pointing to old commits. 

Hey @alexvonchrismar 

Welcome to the community.

I've triggered Git GC on most of your repositories in the workspace. Please review them, and if the size hasn't changed, there are likely more files that need to be removed to reduce the size further.

Please check our guide for more information on how to reduce your repository size further

Reduce repository size 

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Syahrul

Hey @alexvonchrismar ,

I've pinged Atlassian forum support team to check this out. Someone should reach out within 1-2 business days and they'll probably run garbage collection for you 🧹

Cheers,
Tobi

Solved — results and brief guide for other users

Thank you very much to everyone who helped make this possible.

Special thanks to Viswanathan Ramachandran for the initial guidance, to Tomislav Tobijas for reaching out to the appropriate Atlassian team, and to Syahrul and the Bitbucket Cloud team for running the server-side garbage collection.

The result was significant:

- Workspace size before: approximately 866.7 MB
- Workspace size after: approximately 354.2 MB
- Space recovered: approximately 512.5 MB
- Total reduction: approximately 59%

One repository alone decreased from 65.3 MB to 6 MB.

For anyone facing the same issue, here is a brief summary of what worked:

1. Clean the Git history first

Simply deleting files and creating a normal commit does not reduce the real repository size, because the old files remain stored in previous Git commits.

Before doing anything, create a backup. Then rewrite the repository history so that obsolete files are no longer referenced.

In our case, we created a new clean root commit containing only the current files that were still needed and force-pushed it to the main branch.

Also review and remove obsolete remote branches and tags, because they may continue pointing to the old history.

2. Verify the remote state

Confirm that the remote repository contains only the branches and tags that should remain.

The current branch should point to the rewritten clean history. Old commits should no longer be reachable from normal branches or tags.

3. Request server-side garbage collection

Even after rewriting and force-pushing the history, Bitbucket Cloud may continue storing the old, unreachable Git objects.

That unused historical data is often where most of the repository space is being consumed.

A member of the Atlassian team must run server-side garbage collection so Bitbucket can permanently remove those unreachable objects and recalculate the repository and workspace sizes.

Hidden references, such as old pull request references, may also retain historical objects and may need to be reviewed by the Bitbucket team.

In summary:

- First remove unwanted files from the Git history.
- Then remove obsolete branches and tags.
- Finally ask the Atlassian team to run server-side garbage collection.

Deleting files from the latest version alone is not enough. The largest savings usually come from removing obsolete files stored throughout the Git history.

Thank you again to the community volunteers and the Atlassian team. This process recovered more than 500 MB and brought the workspace safely below the storage limit.

I hope this summary helps other Bitbucket Cloud users facing the same problem.

Cheers!  :D