Enforce paths filters for tag pushes in GitHub Actions

[aviscode]

Why are you starting this discussion?

Bug

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Actions Runner

Discussion Details

Currently, workflows using on: push: paths: filters are triggered by tag pushes even when none of the specified paths have changed. The paths filter is ignored for tag push events, which leads to unexpected and unnecessary workflow runs.

Expected Behavior:
Workflows should only run on tag pushes if the specified paths have actually changed, just as they do for branch pushes.

Actual Behavior:
Workflows are triggered for tag pushes regardless of whether the filtered files were changed or not.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Configure a workflow with path filters:

   on:
     push:
       paths:
         - "specific-file.txt"
         - ".github/workflows/workflow.yaml"

2. Make a commit that does NOT touch any of the above files.
3. Create and push a tag for that commit.
4. Observe that the workflow still runs, even though no matching files changed.

Evidence:

• Workflow YAML includes paths filters.
• Commit and tag do not modify the filtered files.
• Workflow still runs, triggered by the tag push event.

Workarounds:
Using tags-ignore: "**" in your workflow disables all tag-triggered runs, but this also prevents all workflows from running on tags, which may not be desirable:

on:
  push:
    tags-ignore:
      - "**"
    paths:
      - "specific-file.txt"

Request:
Please enforce paths filters for tag pushes, so that workflows only run when the specified files change, even for tags. If this limitation is intentional, please document it more clearly.

Impact:
This behavior wastes CI/CD resources and causes confusion about when workflows should actually execute.

Reference: actions/runner#3933

[Hari-2782]

Hi @aviscode,

Thanks for raising this — it’s a great observation and something that many developers run into. Currently, GitHub Actions’ paths filter only applies to branch pushes, not to tag pushes. That means workflows will trigger on any tag push regardless of which files changed, as you described.

Unfortunately, this behavior is by design and not documented clearly, which causes confusion and unnecessary workflow runs. Your suggested enhancement—to have paths filtering apply to tag pushes as well—would be very useful to optimize CI/CD usage and avoid these redundant runs.

As a workaround, some use tags-ignore: "**" to skip all tag pushes, but as you noted, that disables all tag-triggered workflows, which isn’t ideal for workflows that specifically need to run on tags.

It would be great if GitHub could:

• Officially document this limitation
• Consider supporting paths filtering for tag pushes in the future

I recommend adding your feedback to the [GitHub Actions repo](https://github.com/actions/runner/issues) and upvoting related issues to help prioritize this feature.

Thanks again for sharing the detailed repro steps and impact — very helpful!

[aviscode]

I have added a issue as well

actions/runner#3933

[ericbf]

Lol. It’s ironic when someone describes a bug as "by design". Clearly the design is wrong then.

[olee]

On the other hand, this feature is very useful in other cases.
In my case for example when building docker images I only want to build and push images if something actually changed.
However, if a tag is created I always want to build an image for this tag as those images will then get the tag as their docker tag in the registry which is very important.