# Is it possible to determine if an index was created automatically?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-determine-if-an-index-was-created-automatically/372874>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [January 7, 2025, 4:45am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-determine-if-an-index-was-created-automatically/372874 "2025-01-07T04:45:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Richard\_Zhang](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/richard_zhang/32/140473_2.png) [@Richard\_Zhang](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Richard_Zhang)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 4:45am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-determine-if-an-index-was-created-automatically/372874/1 "2025-01-07T04:45:52Z")

</div>

Hi everyone,

there are thousands of indices in our ES cluaster. Some of them were created automatically and some were explicitly created with a PUT request.

I need to get the list of indices that were auto created which I suspect don't have correct settings and mappings, is there a way to achieve that?

I love the `/_cat/indices` api but I don't find a parameter to return only the auto created ones.

Any input is appreciated. Thanks.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 6:12am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-determine-if-an-index-was-created-automatically/372874/2 "2025-01-07T06:12:27Z")

</div>

As far as I know that information is not available.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![TimV](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/timv/32/13162_2.png) [@TimV](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TimV)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 7:10am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-determine-if-an-index-was-created-automatically/372874/3 "2025-01-07T07:10:21Z")

</div>

To the best of my knowledge, the only way to know whether an index was auto-created is by looking at the elasticsearch logs.

It does not appear that we track that in the index settings/metadata.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Richard\_Zhang](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/richard_zhang/32/140473_2.png) [@Richard\_Zhang](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Richard_Zhang)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2025, 12:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/is-it-possible-to-determine-if-an-index-was-created-automatically/372874/4 "2025-01-08T00:50:12Z")

</div>

IMHO, since es server knows if an index exists and creates it if not, it definitely is able to record such a flag in the index metadata with a tiny code change. I’m curious why this was not done. It’s helpful to users diagnosing prod issues.