Managing categories for discussions

You can categorize discussions to organize conversations for your community members, and you can choose a format for each category.

Who can use this feature?

Repository administrators and people with write or greater access to a repository can manage categories for discussions in the repository. Repository administrators and people with write or greater access to the source repository for organization discussions can manage categories for discussions in the organization.

In this article

About categories for discussions

GitHub Discussions is an open forum for conversation among maintainers and the community for a repository or organization on GitHub. All discussions must be created in a category. For repository discussions, people with maintain or admin permissions to the repository define the categories for discussions in that repository. For organization discussions, people with maintain or admin permissions to the source repository define the categories for discussions in that organization. Each category has a format: open-ended discussion, question and answer, or announcement.

Maintainers can use categories with the announcement format to share information, releases, or events. To keep discussions in these categories focused on important updates, only people with maintain or admin permissions can create new discussions, but anyone can comment and reply.

Each category must have a unique name and emoji pairing, and can be accompanied by a detailed description stating its purpose. Categories help maintainers organize how conversations are filed and are customizable to help distinguish categories that are Q&A or more open-ended conversations. Each repository or organization can have up to 25 categories. For more information, see About discussions.

To further organize your discussions, you can create sections and then nest your categories within a section.

Default categories

CategoryPurposeFormat
📣 AnnouncementsUpdates and news from project maintainersAnnouncement
#️⃣ GeneralAnything and everything relevant to the projectOpen-ended discussion
💡 IdeasIdeas to change or improve the projectOpen-ended discussion
🗳 PollsPolls with multiple options for the community to vote for and discussPolls
🙏 Q&AQuestions for the community to answer, with a question/answer formatQuestion and Answer
🙌 Show and tellCreations, experiments, or tests relevant to the projectOpen-ended discussion

Creating a category

  1. Navigate to the main page of the repository or organization where you want to create a category.

  2. Under your repository or organization name, click Discussions.

    Screenshot of the tabs in a GitHub repository. The "Discussions" option is outlined in dark orange.

  3. In the left sidebar, to the right of "Categories", click .

    Screenshot of the "Categories" menu on the Discussions page. The pencil icon for editing categories is highlighted with an orange outline.

  4. Click New category.

    Screenshot of the "Manage discussion categories" page. A button, labeled "New category", is highlighted with an orange outline.

  5. Edit the emoji, title, description, and discussion format for the category. Each category has a format: open-ended discussion, question and answer, or announcement. All discussions can be transferred to another repository, except for announcements.

  6. Optionally, add the category to a section. A category can only belong to one section at a time. For information on how to create a section, see "Creating a section."

    Screenshot of part of the "Create category" page, showing the option to add a category to a section.

  7. Click Create.

Creating a section

  1. Navigate to the main page of the repository or organization where you want to create a category.

  2. Under your repository or organization name, click Discussions.

    Screenshot of the tabs in a GitHub repository. The "Discussions" option is outlined in dark orange.

  3. In the left sidebar, to the right of "Categories", click .

    Screenshot of the "Categories" menu on the Discussions page. The pencil icon for editing categories is highlighted with an orange outline.

  4. Click New section.

    Screenshot of the "Manage discussion categories" page. A button, labeled "New section", is highlighted with an orange outline.

  5. Edit the emoji and title of the section.

  6. Select the categories that you want to add to the section. A category can only belong to one section at a time.

  7. Click Create.

Editing a category

You can edit a category to change the category's emoji, title, description, and discussion format.

  1. Navigate to the main page of the repository or organization where you want to edit a category.

  2. Under your repository or organization name, click Discussions.

    Screenshot of the tabs in a GitHub repository. The "Discussions" option is outlined in dark orange.

  3. In the left sidebar, to the right of "Categories", click .

    Screenshot of the "Categories" menu on the Discussions page. The pencil icon for editing categories is highlighted with an orange outline.

  4. To the right of a category in the list, click .

  5. Edit the emoji, title, description, and discussion format for the category. Each category has a format: open-ended discussion, question and answer, or announcement. All discussions can be transferred to another repository, except for announcements.

  6. Optionally, add the category to a section. A category can only belong to one section at a time. For information on how to create a section, see "Creating a section."

    Screenshot of part of the "Create category" page, showing the option to add a category to a section.

  7. Click Save changes.

Editing a section

You can edit a section to change the section's emoji and title, and to add and remove categories from the section.

  1. Navigate to the main page of the repository or organization where you want to edit a section.

  2. Under your repository or organization name, click Discussions.

    Screenshot of the tabs in a GitHub repository. The "Discussions" option is outlined in dark orange.

  3. In the left sidebar, to the right of "Categories", click .

    Screenshot of the "Categories" menu on the Discussions page. The pencil icon for editing categories is highlighted with an orange outline.

  4. To the right of a section in the list, click .

  5. Edit the section's emoji and title, and select or deselect the categories that you want to add or remove from the section.

  6. Click Update.

Deleting a category

When you delete a category, GitHub will move all discussions in the deleted category to an existing category that you choose.

When you delete a section, all categories within the section will no longer belong to a section.

  1. Navigate to the main page of the repository or organization where you want to delete a category.

  2. Under your repository or organization name, click Discussions.

    Screenshot of the tabs in a GitHub repository. The "Discussions" option is outlined in dark orange.

  3. To the right of a category in the list, click .

  4. Select the dropdown menu, and click a new category for any discussions in the category you're deleting.

  5. Click Delete & Move.

Deleting a section

When you delete a section, all categories within the section will no longer belong to a section.

  1. Navigate to the main page of the repository or organization where you want to delete a section.

  2. Under your repository or organization name, click Discussions.

    Screenshot of the tabs in a GitHub repository. The "Discussions" option is outlined in dark orange.

  3. To the right of a section in the list, click .

  4. In the dialog box, review the information about deleting a section, then click Delete.