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Project and group visibility (FREE)

If you have the Owner role, you can set a project's or group's visibility as:

These visibility levels affect who can see the project in the public access directory (for example, https://gitlab.com/public).

For more granular control, you can determine which features in a project are visible.

The visibility setting of a project must be at least as restrictive as the visibility of its parent group. For example, a private group can include only private projects, while a public group can include private, internal, and public projects.

Public projects and groups

Public projects can be cloned without any authentication over HTTPS.

They are listed in the public access directory (/public) for all users.

Public groups can have public, internal, or private subgroups.

Any authenticated user has the Guest role on the repository.

NOTE: By default, /public is visible to unauthenticated users. However, if the Public visibility level is restricted, /public is visible only to authenticated users.

Internal projects and groups (FREE SELF)

Internal projects can be cloned by any authenticated user except external users.

They are also listed in the public access directory (/public), but only for authenticated users.

Internal groups can have internal or private subgroups.

Any signed-in users except external users have the Guest role on the repository.

NOTE: From July 2019, the Internal visibility setting is disabled for new projects, groups, and snippets on GitLab.com. Existing projects, groups, and snippets using the Internal visibility setting keep this setting. You can read more about the change in the relevant issue.

Private projects and groups

Private projects can only be cloned and viewed by project members (except for guests).

They appear in the public access directory (/public) for project members only.

Private groups can only have private subgroups.

Change project visibility

You can change the visibility of a project.

Prerequisite:

  • You must have the Owner role for a project.
  1. On the top bar, select Main menu > Projects and find your project.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
  3. Expand Visibility, project features, permissions.
  4. Change Project visibility to either Private, Internal, or Public.
  5. Select Save changes.

Change group visibility

You can change the visibility of all projects in a group.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have the Owner role for a group.
  • Subgroups and projects must already have visibility settings that are at least as restrictive as the new setting of the parent group. For example, you cannot set a group to private if a subgroup or project in that group is public.
  1. On the top bar, select Main menu > Groups and find your project.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
  3. Expand Naming, visibility.
  4. Under Visibility level select either Private, Internal, or Public.
  5. Select Save changes.

Restrict use of public or internal projects (FREE SELF)

You can restrict the use of visibility levels for users when they create a project or a snippet. This is useful to prevent users from publicly exposing their repositories by accident. The restricted visibility settings do not apply to administrators.

For details, see Restricted visibility levels.