GitHub Actions checkout slowness usually stems from opt-in inputs, not default shallow cloning

The article explains that actions/checkout already defaults to a shallow clone with fetch-depth set to 1, so adding that setting rarely speeds anything up. Slow checkouts are typically caused by inputs such as full history, fetch-tags, Git LFS, or submodules that a workflow has explicitly enabled. The author recommends reviewing the with: block to find which override is responsible. Full history is often enabled for tools that need only a limited number of commits, so a bounded depth or deepening only in the relevant job is usually sufficient. Defaults are quoted from the action's declarations as of 21 September 2026, when the current major version was v7.