Public access
GitLab allows Owners to set a projects' visibility as public, internal
or private. These visibility levels affect who can see the project in the
public access directory (/public under your GitLab instance), like at https://gitlab.com/public.
Visibility of projects
Public projects
Public projects can be cloned without any authentication over https.
They will be listed in the public access directory (/public) for all users.
Any logged in user will have Guest permissions on the repository.
Internal projects
Internal projects can be cloned by any logged in user.
They will also be listed in the public access directory (/public), but only for logged
in users.
Any logged in user will have Guest permissions on the repository.
NOTE: 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
Private projects can only be cloned and viewed by project members (except for guests).
They will appear in the public access directory (/public) for project members only.
How to change project visibility
- Go to your project's Settings
- Change "Visibility Level" to either Public, Internal or Private
Visibility of groups
NOTE: Note: Starting with GitLab 8.6, the group visibility has changed and can be configured the same way as projects. In previous versions, a group's page was always visible to all users.
Like with projects, the visibility of a group can be set to dictate whether anonymous users, all signed in users, or only explicit group members can view it. The restriction for visibility levels on the application setting level also applies to groups, so if that's set to internal, the explore page will be empty for anonymous users. The group page now has a visibility level icon.
Visibility of users
The public page of a user, located at /username, is always visible whether
you are logged in or not.
When visiting the public page of a user, you can only see the projects which you are privileged to.
If the public level is restricted, user profiles are only visible to logged in users.
Restricting the use of public or internal projects
In the Admin area under Settings (/admin/application_settings), you can
restrict the use of visibility levels for users when they create a project or a
snippet:
This is useful to prevent people exposing their repositories to public by accident. The restricted visibility settings do not apply to admin users.