GitHub Pages deployment times out at syncing_files; retry remains queued for hours

[tekinhoca]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Workflow Deployment

Discussion Details

Hello,

I am experiencing a persistent GitHub Pages deployment issue and would appreciate help investigating whether this is related to the Pages deployment infrastructure.

Repository: https://github.com/tekinhoca/tekinhoca.github.io

Website: https://tekinhoca.github.io/

Workflow: pages build and deployment

Workflow run: #855

Run ID: 42646104582

Commit: 11a31c234ae194168de62fec127f1811447ff4bd

What happened?

The build and report-build-status jobs completed successfully. However, the deploy job failed.

The deployment log shows:

Current status: syncing_files
Error: Timeout reached, aborting!
Error: Timeout reached, aborting!
Canceling Pages deployment...
Canceled deployment with ID 11a31c234ae194168de62fec127f1811447ff4bd

The deployment timed out after approximately ten minutes while in the syncing_files state.

What happened after retrying?

After waiting approximately 14 hours, I used Re-run failed jobs to retry only the failed deployment job. I also enabled debug logging.

However, the retry remained in the Queued state for more than four hours. All three jobs in the workflow graph appeared blank, with no visible progress.

An important comparison

The same repository and commit are successfully deployed through Netlify.

Netlify reported a successful deployment for main@11a31c2 at approximately 18:34 Turkey time on November 9, 2026.

The Netlify website is serving the updated version, while GitHub Pages continues to serve the previous version.

This makes me suspect that the problem is related to the GitHub Pages deployment process rather than the website files or the commit itself.

My questions

1. Is there a known issue with GitHub Pages deployments getting stuck at syncing_files?
2. Can a deployment time out at this stage even when the build job and artifact generation succeed?
3. Why might a retry remain queued for several hours without starting its jobs?
4. Is there anything I can do to safely trigger a successful deployment, or does this require intervention on GitHub's side?

I have not changed my repository's Pages configuration or DNS settings.

Any advice or similar experiences would be appreciated.

Thank you.

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[hasanerman]

hocam merhaba, bu sorunu yaşayan tek kişi siz değilsiniz. son iki haftada community'de aynı hatayla ilgili 20'den fazla başlık açılmış:
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Acommunity%2Fcommunity+syncing_files&type=discussions&s=created&o=desc

aynı commit netlify'da sorunsuz yayınlandığına göre dosyalarınızda bir sorun yok, büyük ihtimalle github pages tarafında geçici bir problem var. bugün aynı hatayı yaşayan biri hiçbir şey değiştirmeden yeni bir deploy başlatınca düzelmiş: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/212625

eski job'u tekrar çalıştırmak yerine boş bir commit atıp yeni bir deploy başlatmayı deneyin:
git commit --allow-empty -m "redeploy" && git push

---

you're not the only one, there are 20+ threads about the same error in the last two weeks (link above). since the same commit deploys fine on netlify, your files are ok, it's most likely a temporary issue on the github pages side. someone with the same error today got it working again with a new deploy, without changing anything (#212625).

instead of re-running the old job, push an empty commit to start a fresh deploy:
git commit --allow-empty -m "redeploy" && git push

[tekinhoca]

Update: I followed the suggestion to trigger a completely new GitHub Pages deployment by adding a small redeploy.txt file and creating a new commit.

Unfortunately, the new deployment failed in exactly the same way.

The build and artifact generation completed successfully. GitHub created the Pages deployment and moved from deployment_queued to syncing_files, but it remained in that state until the 10-minute timeout.

The log ended with:

Current status: syncing_files
Error: Timeout reached, aborting!
Error: Timeout reached, aborting!
Canceling Pages deployment...
Canceled deployment with ID bd926bc91395f8f6d36374a8fad1ec28dee05b89

So, creating a fresh commit and starting a completely new deployment did not resolve the issue.

The same repository and website content continue to deploy successfully through Netlify.

This makes it increasingly likely that the issue is on the GitHub Pages deployment infrastructure side.

Has anyone found a reliable workaround, or could GitHub staff investigate this recurring syncing_files timeout?