--- title: Quick hack: Speed up your GitLab CI | daily.dev description: Personal forks on GNOME GitLab don't get access to AWS runners, leaving developers waiting hours for a shared runner to pick up their jobs. A quick fix is to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/quick-hack-speed-up-your-gitlab-ci-pqbujka6m twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Quick hack: Speed up your GitLab CI | daily.dev og:description: Personal forks on GNOME GitLab don't get access to AWS runners, leaving developers waiting hours for a shared runner to pick up their jobs. A quick fix is to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/quick-hack-speed-up-your-gitlab-ci-pqbujka6m og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/PQbujKA6m.png og:image:alt: Quick hack: Speed up your GitLab CI og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Quick hack: Speed up your GitLab CI **[Collabora Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/collabora)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Personal forks on GNOME GitLab don't get access to AWS runners, leaving developers waiting hours for a shared runner to pick up their jobs. A quick fix is to register your own PC or spare laptop as a private GitLab runner using gitlab-runner and Docker. The post walks through installing Docker, installing and starting gitlab-runner, and registering it against a project using its CI/CD token. A reusable bash function is provided to simplify registering the same machine across multiple personal forks on different GitLab instances (GNOME, freedesktop, Collabora). ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do I register my own machine as a GitLab runner for my personal fork? Install Docker and gitlab-runner, start the runner service, then run `sudo gitlab-runner register --non-interactive --url --executor docker --docker-image fedora:27 --registration-token `. The registration token is found under your project's Settings → CI/CD → Runners. You can repeat this for each personal fork on the same GitLab instance to get immediate job pickup instead of waiting in the shared runner queue. _Developers setting up self-hosted GitLab runners share tips and configs on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How to Quickly Deploy GitLab via Docker](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-quickly-deploy-gitlab-via-docker-4uhvzmzbi) · The New Stack · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [I like GitLab](https://daily.dev/posts/i-like-gitlab-esuxm3yiz) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Scale software delivery without owning the runner fleet](https://daily.dev/posts/scale-software-delivery-without-owning-the-runner-fleet-r08bafyst) · GitLab · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Autoscalable GitLab runners on AWS EC2](https://daily.dev/posts/autoscalable-gitlab-runners-on-aws-ec2-myamn1tth) · Palark Blog · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [GitHub Actions Custom Runner Images Reach General Availability](https://daily.dev/posts/github-actions-custom-runner-images-reach-general-availability-bkfifh4ww) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#docker](https://daily.dev/tags/docker), [#cicd](https://daily.dev/tags/cicd), [#gitlab-ci](https://daily.dev/tags/gitlab-ci) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/quick-hack-speed-up-your-gitlab-ci-pqbujka6m) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Quick hack: Speed up your GitLab CI","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/quick-hack-speed-up-your-gitlab-ci-pqbujka6m","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/quick-hack-speed-up-your-gitlab-ci-pqbujka6m"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:56:20.178Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:29:33.968Z","description":"Personal forks on GNOME GitLab don't get access to AWS runners, leaving developers waiting hours for a shared runner to pick up their jobs. 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The registration token is found under your project's Settings → CI/CD → Runners. You can repeat this for each personal fork on the same GitLab instance to get immediate job pickup instead of waiting in the shared runner queue. Developers setting up self-hosted GitLab runners share tips and configs on daily.dev."}}]} ```