[FR] Add a way to programmatically end the current session

[NightMachinery]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Having an API to end the current session can save resources. There is interest in doing this as well; I found 3 Stackoveflow questions about doing exactly this, one of which had a bounty set on it.

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68640984/how-to-stop-google-colab-runtime-without-it-automaticly-restarting?noredirect=1&lq=1
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50541851/is-there-a-function-in-google-colab-module-to-close-the-runtime
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62331439/how-to-terminate-current-colab-session-from-notebook-cell

Describe the solution you'd like

from google.colab import terminate_session
terminate_session()

Describe alternatives you've considered
We can just let it run, until the AI overlords stop the sessions, wasting resources.

[qkum]

Basic 101 feature.

I assumed it existed and I had just not found it yet.

I had too high expectations I see.

Just like I assumed paying customers could use their services without getting treated like a GPU abuser. Nope.

[cperry-goog]

This is a good feature. I thought we already had it somewhere, but since I can't find it, leaving this open.

[lucids-git-goods]

please. the current assumption that users are just going to stare at the colab screens until training is complete is unrealistic and would just be unhealthy.

[KaranKhoslaDianthus]

Hi, I'm just checking if there has been any progress on this requested feature

[BrockFletcher]

Any solutions? I've seen to run
!kill $(ps aux | awk '{print $2}')
or
!kill -9 -1
but these seem inelegant?

[happycube]

The !kill commands don't seem to work, at least with pro+ backgrounding. When I run it in an active notebook, it immedately starts a new session.

I also set up a time-delayed !kill -9 -1 and when I reconnected a few minutes later it listed the session as "unknown notebook" and I had to terminate it manually.

[carriemorrison]

Following...would really like to be able to stop notebook after execution. rather than being punished for it lol

[LordLean]

Just a friendly comment to help push this request up - it would be great if I could programmatically terminate a long session that's running whilst I nap!

[LuciferSam86]

Yeah, it would be nice, especially now we're switching to the compute credits.

[peap]

Thanks for your patience here, everyone. Starting next week you'll be able to programmatically end sessions from code cells like so:

from google.colab import runtime
runtime.unassign()

The new unassign() function marks the currently connected runtime for deletion and disconnects any notebook sessions. I expect it to be available for any runtimes started next Monday morning (Sep 12, PDT) or later.