GitHub auto-merge option isn't showing in pull requests

Question

According to GitHub's docs, after enabling "Allow auto-merge" in my repo settings, I should see a button that says "Enable auto-merge" in my pull requests. I do not.

I've opened new PRs, toggled the types of merging allowed, and switched my repo visibility to public, but nothing has worked.

Answer 1

I resolved this by applying a branch protection to the main branch. Pull requests raised after that time now show the "Enable auto-merge" button.

This makes sense because, if the base branch is unprotected, the PR would merge immediately after being raised since status checks typically take at least a couple of seconds to report a "pending" status.

Answer 2

I was having the same problem and just want to complement the right answer and make the comprehension easier.

You need to:

• Activate auto-merge in the base branch;
• Protect the base branch checking "Require pull request reviews before merging" or "Require status checks to pass before merging";
• Select which status checks are required in order to merge automatically, as this image shows

Then auto-merge option will show:

Source: docs