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Any way to copy a droplet snapshot images to another team via automation?

Posted on January 29, 2026

I have a situation where there are two Teams, one for prod and one for staging, and I am building droplet images using Packer using the DigitalOcean packer builder, which essentially spins up a droplet, configures it, and then snapshots it. At the moment, I have to build the images twice, once in each Team, so they are available in both.

This has some downsides. The CI worker cost and builder droplet cost is double, although not particularly large. I can’t build and test the images in an isolated environment from production. I do not really have a guarantee the images are truly identical. For example, the timing could be unlucky and prod could catch a different set of updates than staging when doing dnf update or something.

Looking at the documentation for transferring droplets between Teams, it looks like a web UI only operation: https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/snapshots/how-to/transfer/

Additionally, even if there was an API for cross-team transfers, it seems like that operation is a move (not a copy), and I can’t find a way to copy droplet snapshots, so I’d still have to do a packer build once per environment.

Is there any workaround for this?

I see that Custom Images may provide the kind of workflow I am looking for, just trying to see if there’s something I’m missing before investigating changing where/how the images are built.



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Hi there,

As far as I am aware, there is currently no supported way to copy a snapshot between Teams via API or automation. Snapshot transfers appear to be UI-only and are a move, not a copy, which makes them hard to fit into automated or multi-Team workflows.

Given that, the usual workaround seems to be what you are already considering: Custom Images. Build once in an isolated project or Team, then reuse the same image across Teams. That helps avoid drift between prod and staging and removes the need to run the Packer build twice.

If this is something you would like to see supported in the future, it might be worth posting it as an idea here: https://ideas.digitalocean.com/

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