Stop or Delete a Workspace

Stop a Workspace

Stopping a workspace means to temporarily pause a container so that it doesn't consume any more computing resources such as CPU or memory. Depending on the provider used, this either means to stop a container (see docker stop for more information) or shutdown the underlying VM where the container is running. Devsy will automatically determine what specific action to take when a workspace is stopped.

Devsy Desktop

In the 'Workspaces' view, open the actions menu for a running workspace and choose 'Stop'. The workspace immediately shows Stopping and its current step, including closing connections before the stop command begins. Once stopped, the menu will show a 'Start' option to resume the workspace.

Devsy CLI

Run the following command to stop a workspace:

devsy workspace stop my-workspace

Afterwards, you can start the workspace via:

devsy workspace up my-workspace

Automatic stop

Some providers allow automatic stop of a workspace, usually to save costs when a workspace is not used. For example, the Google Cloud provider will shutdown the virtual machine where the workspace is running after it's unused for 10 minutes, by default. This means you need to start the workspace after it has been stopped when you want to reconnect.

Delete a Workspace

Deleting a workspace means to erase all state of an existing workspace and remove all traces of it within Devsy. Depending on the Devsy provider, this means either removing a Docker container or deleting a whole virtual machine. Devsy will automatically determine what specific action to take when a workspace is deleted.

Devsy Desktop

In the 'Workspaces' view, open the actions menu for the workspace and choose 'Delete', then confirm the deletion dialog. The workspace immediately shows Deleting and its current step. The row disappears after deletion finishes and the workspace list confirms removal.

Progress for desktop actions stays available when you navigate between pages or reload the window. If the action fails, its error remains visible and you can open the workspace logs for details. If the action finishes but refreshing its status fails, use Retry refresh; this refreshes the observation without repeating the action. A Deleted label with Refreshing list means deletion completed and the list is still catching up.

Live action progress covers commands initiated by the desktop. Commands launched in a separate terminal are reflected by periodic status refreshes. Progress recovery after fully quitting and restarting the desktop is not supported.

Devsy CLI

Run the following command to delete a workspace:

devsy workspace delete my-workspace

devsy workspace down (as well as rm) is an alias for devsy workspace delete. It performs the same full Devsy workspace teardown:

devsy workspace down my-workspace

For Docker Compose-backed workspaces, teardown uses Compose down (with --remove-volumes remaining an opt-in flag to remove associated named volumes). Use devsy workspace stop when you want to stop a workspace while retaining its configuration and state so it can be started again later.

If deletion fails because the Provider is not reachable anymore or another error has occurred, you can also force delete a workspace via:

devsy workspace delete my-workspace --force

However, this means the workspace will only be deleted on the Devsy side locally, and any error raised by the used provider will be ignored. Only use this option with caution as this might leave previously created resources behind.