Get started with v4 of GitHub Actions Artifacts

GitHub has released version 4 of its artifact upload and download actions for GitHub Actions, which significantly enhances speed, reliability, and flexibility in managing artifacts. Originally launched in 2019, earlier versions of the tool were tightly integrated with the GitHub Actions runner, leading to limitations such as inflexibility in sharing artifacts across workflow runs and issues with file corruption and performance. To address these, GitHub rebuilt the feature using a new architecture that allows direct uploads and downloads to blob storage, resulting in a more streamlined process. This new version allows artifacts to be immediately available in the UI and API during a workflow run, improving usability and enabling more dynamic workflows, like embedding artifact URLs in pull requests. The update also introduces compatibility changes, requiring users to consistently use version 4 for both uploading and downloading artifacts, while also imposing a 500 artifact limit per job to maintain fair usage. These improvements have led to significant enhancements in the upload and download operations, achieving up to a 10x increase in performance.