Scheduling Freezes

Use freezes to coordinate:

• Critical release stabilization
• High-traffic events where deploy risk must be minimized
• End-of-quarter / audit windows
• Incident response (manual immediate freeze)

In the dashboard under Merge Protections → Freezes:

1. Click Schedule a Freeze

2. Define start / end (UTC)

3. Add matching conditions: by default the freeze applies to every pull requests, but you can limit its impact with this field

4. Save; active freezes appear in the list

During a freeze, the protection check fails with a clear message unless an override condition is met (see below).

Use the Freeze Merges Now action for immediate blocking. You can later unfreeze manually.

Create a rule with a success condition that grants override, e.g.:

- label != hotfix

Then apply the hotfix label (manually or via automation) to bypass the freeze for a specific PR.

You can also manage freezes from the command line using the Mergify CLI.

List all scheduled freezes for a repository:

mergify freeze list

Use --json to get machine-readable output:

mergify freeze list --json

Create a time-bounded freeze:

mergify freeze create \
  --reason "Release stabilization" \
  --timezone UTC \
  --start 2024-01-15T18:00:00 \
  --end 2024-01-15T22:00:00

Create an emergency freeze with no end time:

mergify freeze create \
  --reason "Incident response" \
  --timezone UTC

You can restrict which pull requests are affected using conditions and exclusions:

mergify freeze create \
  --reason "Freeze main branch" \
  --timezone UTC \
  -c "base=main" \
  -e "label=hotfix"

Modify an existing freeze by its ID:

mergify freeze update <freeze_id> \
  --end 2024-01-16T06:00:00

Remove a freeze by its ID:

mergify freeze delete <freeze_id>