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How to make a document type non-deletable in Sanity?

8 replies
Last updated: Nov 29, 2025
How would I go about making a document type not deletable? I’ve come as far as adding only once instance to the structurebuilder but it’s still possible to duplicate and delete it. Tried with the following: “__experimental_actions: [“update”, /* ‘create’, ‘delete’, */ “publish”],” but it didn’t do anything for it.
AI Update

You're on the right track! The __experimental_actions property you mentioned was from Sanity v2 and is no longer the correct approach in v3. Here's how to properly disable delete and duplicate actions for a document type in the current version of Sanity:

Configure Document Actions in sanity.config.ts

You need to use the document.actions configuration in your sanity.config.ts file. Here's how to filter out the delete and duplicate actions for a specific document type:

import {defineConfig} from 'sanity'

export default defineConfig({
  // ... rest of your config
  document: {
    actions: (prev, context) => {
      // For your singleton document type, remove delete and duplicate actions
      if (context.schemaType === 'yourDocumentType') {
        return prev.filter(
          (action) => action.action !== 'delete' && action.action !== 'duplicate'
        )
      }
      return prev
    },
  },
})

Replace 'yourDocumentType' with the actual name of your document type.

For Multiple Document Types

If you need to apply this to multiple document types:

document: {
  actions: (prev, context) => {
    const singletonTypes = ['settings', 'homepage', 'footer']
    
    if (singletonTypes.includes(context.schemaType)) {
      return prev.filter(
        (action) => !['delete', 'duplicate'].includes(action.action || '')
      )
    }
    return prev
  },
}

Complete Example with Structure Builder

For a singleton pattern, you'd typically combine this with Structure Builder configuration:

import {defineConfig} from 'sanity'
import {structureTool} from 'sanity/structure'

export default defineConfig({
  // ... other config
  plugins: [
    structureTool({
      structure: (S) =>
        S.list()
          .title('Content')
          .items([
            S.listItem()
              .title('Settings')
              .child(
                S.document()
                  .schemaType('settings')
                  .documentId('settings')
              ),
            // ... other items
          ])
    })
  ],
  document: {
    actions: (prev, context) => {
      if (context.schemaType === 'settings') {
        return prev.filter(
          (action) => action.action !== 'delete' && action.action !== 'duplicate'
        )
      }
      return prev
    },
  },
})

This approach:

  1. Removes delete and duplicate from the document actions menu
  2. Works with Sanity v3's document actions API
  3. Can be scoped to specific document types using the context parameter

The key difference from v2 is that you're now filtering the prev array of actions rather than setting a property on the schema type itself. You can read more about this in the Document Actions documentation.

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