Archive issues

Linear archives issues automatically to keep your workspace uncluttered and easy to search.

Overview

We automate issue archiving for you so that you don't have to worry about cleaning up issue lists. Archived issues cannot be edited until restored but can still be found in workspace search results. Cycles and projects will also archive as soon as all issues in them have been closed and archived.

Configure

Choose how soon your issues should archive under Team settings > Workflow. You can set a duration between 1-12 months.

Basics

Auto-archive

There is no action necessary to archive issues. They'll automatically archive according to your team's auto-archive settings. Update the time period after which closed issues are auto-archived in Team Settings > Workflow. Changes you make should apply within 24 hours.

It's important to note situations where an issue will not be auto-archived until another action happens:

• Sub-issues will not be archived if the parent issue is not in a completed or cancelled state.
• Projects and cycles will be archived immediately after all of the associated issues have been archived.

Auto-archive for cycles and projects

Issues will not be auto-archived until the associated cycle and project are completed. For this reason, you may see issues older than the auto-archive setting in your workspace.

For project completion, we always use a window of one month, regardless of the team settings. If you have issues set to auto-archive after 3 months, they will auto-archive 3 months after the cycle completes, or 1 month after the project completes.

Go to archive

Each team has it's own archive with past issues, projects, and cycles. Access it with the shortcut G then X or find it in the sidebar under the three dot menu beside each team name. To keep the app speedy, archived issues are loaded on demand rather than stored in the client, so you may find the issues load a little slower on this page than elsewhere in the app.

Restore issues

Restore issues from the archive in order to edit them. The easiest way to find archived issues is to search for them in workspace search or alternatively go to your team's archive and filter and search there. While an issue is archived, you can still copy its link, issue ID and git branch name.

Auto-close

Linear can also automatically closes issues that have not been updated after a certain time period. When auto-closed, an issue is marked Canceled and we publish a history item to its Activity feed and notify subscribers. You can re-open an auto-closed issue anytime by changing its status. You can also create a custom status for auto-closed issues and configure it under Team settings > Workflows.

Issues will not be auto-closed until the associated cycle and project are completed.

Hide completed issues

Since it's not possible to manually archive issues, these are some ways to hide completed issues from views:

• Configure display options for the view to only show completed issues from the past week, project or current cycle.
• Create a new completed workflow status, hide it, then move issues to that workflow status to remove them from view.
• Update views to filter out Completed statuses

Automated backlog management

Set Linear to automatically close issues that haven't been updated in n-months. This will trigger a notification, giving you a chance to re-open the issue (but in practice you usually won't).

Linear can also automatically archive issues n-months after they're closed to unclutter your views, too. Configure this in team settings.

FAQ

Did we miss something? Have a question? Email us at support@linear.app to let us know.