# Creating a lifecycle policy for a repository in Amazon ECR
Creating a lifecycle policy

 Use a lifecycle policy to create a set of rules that expire or archive unused repository images. After creating a lifecycle policy, the affected images are expired or archived within 24 hours.

**Note**  
If you are using Amazon ECR replication to make copies of a repository across different Regions or accounts, note that a lifecycle policy can only take an action on repositories in the Region it was created in. Therefore, if you have replication turned on you may want to create a lifecycle policy in each Region and account you are replicating your repositories to.

## Prerequisite


**Best practice:** Create a lifecycle policy preview to verify that the images expired or archived by your lifecycle policy rules are what you intend. For instructions, see [Creating a lifecycle policy preview in Amazon ECR](lpp_creation.md).

## To create a lifecycle policy (AWS Management Console)


1. Open the Amazon ECR console at [https://console.aws.amazon.com/ecr/repositories](https://console.aws.amazon.com/ecr/repositories).

1. From the navigation bar, choose the Region that contains the repository for which to create a lifecycle policy.

1. In the navigation pane, under **Private registry**, choose **Repositories**.

1. On the **Private repositories** page, select a repository and that use the **Actions** drop down to choose **Lifecycle policies**.

1. On the lifecycle policy rules page for the repository, choose **Create rule**.

1. Enter the following details for your lifecycle policy rule.

   1. For **Rule priority**, type a number for the rule priority. The rule priority determines in what order the lifecycle policy rules are applied. A lower rule priority number means higher priority. For example, a rule with priority 1 takes precedence over a rule with priority 2.

   1. For **Rule description**, type a description for the lifecycle policy rule.

   1. For **Image status**, choose **Tagged (wildcard matching)**, **Tagged (prefix matching)**, **Untagged**, or **Any**.
**Important**  
If you specify multiple tags, only the images with all specified tags are selected.

   1. If you chose **Tagged (wildcard matching)** for **Image status**, then for **Specify tags for wildcard matching**, you can specify a list of image tags with a wildcard (**\$1**) on which to take action with your lifecycle policy. For example, if your images are tagged as `prod`, `prod1`, `prod2`, and so on, you would specify `prod*` to take action on all of them. If you specify multiple tags, only the images with all specified tags are selected.
**Important**  
There is a maximum limit of four wildcards (`*`) per string. For example, `["*test*1*2*3", "test*1*2*3*"]` is valid but `["test*1*2*3*4*5*6"]` is invalid.

   1. If you chose **Tagged (prefix matching)**for **Image status**, then for **Specify tags for prefix matching**, you can specify a list of image tags on which to take action with your lifecycle policy.

   1. For **Match criteria**, choose **Days since image created**, **Days since last recorded pull time**, **Days since image archived**, or **Image count** and then specify a value.

   1. For **Rule action**, choose either **Expire** or **Archive**.

   1. Choose **Save**.

1. Create additional lifecycle policy rules by repeating steps 5–7.

## To create a lifecycle policy (AWS CLI)


1. Obtain the name of the repository for which to create the lifecycle policy.

   ```
   aws ecr describe-repositories
   ```

1. Create a local file named `policy.json` with the contents of the lifecycle policy. For lifecycle policy examples, see [Examples of lifecycle policies in Amazon ECR](lifecycle_policy_examples.md).

1. Create a lifecycle policy by specifying the repository name and reference the lifecycle policy JSON file you created.

   ```
   aws ecr put-lifecycle-policy \
         --repository-name repository-name \
         --lifecycle-policy-text file://policy.json
   ```