How to remove a reviewer from a Pull Request

[jimn-tn]

We have our PR’s to require a minimum amount of reviewers to be approved. Sometimes people are out or priorites shift so others may pick up a the process of reviewing which leaves the previous reviewers on the request. Also, as people comment or get mentioned in the conversation, they get added to the list as well.

Is there a way to totally remove them as a reviewer? I know we can just change their status but visually it’s not the best looking at possibly a list of people who may never actually review something

[AndreaGriffiths11]

Hi @jimn-tn,

Thanks for being here! You can dismiss pull request reviews that are no longer valid or are unable to be approved by the reviewer, but as you’ve mentioned on your post their names remain on the list. 

We’re always working to improve GitHub and we consider every suggestion we receive. I don’t show that we are planning to implement any flow changes like that to the PR reviews feature in the immediate future, but I have added this to our internal request list for the team to review and consider. We can’t say if/when we may add a feature, but we really appreciate you providing feedback on how we can make GitHub work better for you!

Best,

Andrea

[lordzsolt]

5 years later....

[jordanbtucker]

I can't believe there is nothing I can do to remove this.

[amirna2]

Yeah..should be a dead simple feature to add. Gitlab has had that from pretty much day 1.

[Electro-Factory]

wow

[dgl2000]

2025 now

[mulkieran]

This would help me, too. If I’m essentially mentoring a new contributor through a PR, I’ld like to remove myself from the list of reviewers when the PR is ready and goes up for actual review. As it stands, I can’t.

[noamhacker]

click on the gear icon where you’d normally add reviewers, locate yourself and uncheck to remove yourself

[ErroneousFatality]

Doesn't work.

[Bus42]

Confirmed. No option to remove anyone you accidentally clicked on because you sneeze.

[jusjusjus]

After clicking on my icon I still appear on the list of Reviewers, but without the yellow dot. This is not what I am aiming for.

[demisx]

I often get assigned to some PRs which I don’t need to be a reviewer anymore. I would like a simple functionality to remove myself from the reviewer list similar to how I can add myself to the list. Currently, click on my name does nothing. Please add this feature.

[BigLep]

Any update on this? I want to allow someone who has interacted with a PR in the past to remove themselves from the reviewer list. My reasons for this are:

1. Make it clear to the PR author that the reviewer is no longer engaged.
2. Make my team’s github project board more clear about what PR’s are truly awaiting a certain individual’s review. For example, we have some longstanding PRs that we’re trying to close down but have assigned new reviewers to them. These old items are cluttering up for the previous reviewers.

[queenofcorgis]

Hello @BigLep - and thank you for this feedback! It looks like since this topic was initially posted our feedback and feature request process has changed.

If you wouldn’t mind, I encourage you to submit your feedback via the new GitHub Feedback Discussions forum so that our product team can better track your request :slight_smile:. It’s a new thing, but we’re trying to push all product feedback to the same new area so it’s easier to find and consolidate user feedback!

[loic-sharma]

Hello, I also need this feature to remove stale items from my “Review Requests” page.

I created a GitHub Feedback discussion for this feature request: Remove myself as reviewer from pull requests · Discussion #16730 · github/feedback · GitHub

[ym-herby]

This would be super helpful as I have contractors on my projects who are no longer with the company and I’d like to remove them as reviewers.

[christopherallanperry]

Same here. A colleague who has provided feedback on a PR has now left the organisation, and I'd like to remove them from the reviewer list.

[zbynekwinkler]

I just successfully deleted a reviewer from a pull request using Github API.

[justin-octo]

Conversly, I accidentally removed all the reviewers by clicking the link next to one to request a renewed review. It clear ALL the reviewers and just left him. I have no way to re-add those reviewers.

[tinoh9]

I just got the same issue like @justin-octo, don't know how to re-add previous reviewers.

[justin-octo]

This seems like such a simple but important function. Makes me wonder about the future of GitHub if a ticket like this can sit here for 4 1/2 years with little/no effort.

[bajaj6]

+1 very imp for solid code review process.

[parberge]

So should we vote on https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/23054 for this?

[amirna2]

Yeah. I had a case where someone was able to inject themselves as reviewer on a PR and then out of the blue approved a PR.
I can't either remove them or even block them.

[justin-octo]

This is more of a work around, and maybe only really applicable for organizations. But you can make a Team and assign the Team as a reviewer. Then as people come and go they are added or removed from the Team.

[justin-octo]

Maybe this is why they haven't worked on this. They want everyone to pay to have an organization for this "feature" instead of giving it away for free.

[amirna2]

You can also create a CODEOWNERS file in your .github folder where you can specify who can be a reviewer. It's not an idea solution if you have many different roles on a projects.

[thoraage]

I just tested and it seems you can remove reviewers with the github cli like this:

gh pr edit --repo <your repo> <pr number> --remove-reviewer <login of reviewer>

[kerthcet]

Seems gh also not work .. Have no idea just me or not.

[kerthcet]

So I can add reviewer via gh pr edit $PR_NUMBER --add-reviewer <xxx>, however, I can't remove reviewer via gh pr edit $PR_NUMBER --remove-reviewer <xxx>, but from the front side, I can assign/unassign the reviewers from the reviewer list, if you have the write role.

[thoraage]

Is the reviewer a code owner? I've seen that in that case you can't remove them. There might be other right evaluation involved here also; do you have the authority needed to remove them

[kerthcet]

From the front side, I mean on the github page, the user can assign/unassign the reviewers from the list. So i think the user has the permission (but not a code owner).

But with gh tool, specially in workflow, it doesn't work even with exit code 0 returned.

[Drew-Daniels]

Noticed the same thing as @kerthcet on my end. I can add reviewers with the CLI, but I cannot remove them with it. I can however remove them using the PR UI.

I've tried this:

gh pr edit <PR-NUMBER> --remove-reviewer=<COMMA-SEPARATED-LIST-OF-REVIEWER-USERNAMES>

[myluco]

I just had that problem.
This is what I did:

• Select the Reviewers "button"; the same button you selected to add the reviewer
• Now it should show the list of the already requested reviewers AND the possible reviewers that you can choose
• Select the reviewer that has already been chosen (the name would have the "selected v" mark.
• That is it

[jordanbtucker]

That didn't work for me. The reviewer I want to remove does not have a check mark. There is no way to delete the spam comments they left.

[justin-octo]

Ugh. That's annoying. Does the GH CLI option in the answer work for your situation @jordanbtucker ?
gh pr edit <PR-NUMBER> --remove-reviewer=<COMMA-SEPARATED-LIST-OF-REVIEWER-USERNAMES>

[justin-octo]

Just thinking creatively... and maybe stupid, but can you export it to GitLab, remove the comments, and then import it back to GitHub?
Seems excessive, but might be a solution.