I want to delete an AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) certificate. However, I receive an error similar to "The certificate is in use (associated with other AWS resources) and cannot be deleted. Disassociate the certificate from each resource in the list and try again."
Short description
Deploying an edge-optimized API endpoint creates an Amazon CloudFront distribution by Amazon API Gateway. Deploying a Regional API endpoint creates an Application Load Balancer by API Gateway. The CloudFront distribution or Application Load Balancer is owned by API Gateway, not your account. The ACM certificate provided to deploy API Gateway is associated with the CloudFront distribution or Application Load Balancer.
Similarly, adding a custom domain to your Amazon Cognito user pool creates a CloudFront distribution. The CloudFront distribution is owned by the Amazon Cognito service, not by your account. The ACM certificate that's provided when you create the custom domain is associated with the CloudFront distribution.
Defining a custom endpoint for your domain in Amazon OpenSearch Service creates an Application Load Balancer. The Application Load Balancer is owned by the OpenSearch Service, not by your account. The ACM certificate that's provided when you create the custom endpoint is associated with the Application Load Balancer.
Note: You can check the resource that the ACM certificate is associated with by running the describe-certificate command with AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).
Resolution
Remove the association of the ACM certificate with the CloudFront distribution or Application Load Balancer. To do this, you must replace the ACM certificate associated with the custom domain, or delete the custom domain.
Important:
To remove the association of the ACM certificate, do one of the following:
Then, delete the ACM certificate.
Related information
API Gateway problems