How do you perform a rollback in ArgoCD?

ArgoCD stores a history of every sync operation for each Application, including the Git commit SHA, parameters, and manifests that were applied. Rolling back means telling ArgoCD to re-sync the Application to a specific previous revision from this history, overriding the current HEAD of the tracked branch.

Rollback via CLI

# View sync history
argocd app history my-app

# Roll back to history ID 3
argocd app rollback my-app 3

Rollback via UI

In the ArgoCD UI, navigate to the Application → History and Rollback tab. Each entry shows the commit SHA, time, and initiator. Click Rollback on any row to restore that state.

Important caveats:

• A rollback puts the Application into an OutOfSync state relative to the current Git HEAD, because the cluster is now running a different revision than what Git currently says.
• If automated sync or self-healing is enabled, ArgoCD will immediately re-sync back to HEAD after the rollback, undoing it. You must disable automated sync before rolling back if you want the rollback to persist.
• The GitOps-native alternative to rollback is to revert the Git commit — this preserves the audit trail and lets ArgoCD sync forward to the reverted state rather than syncing backward.

History retention is configurable via server.app.revision.history.limit in argocd-cm (default is 10 revisions).