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Customizing your repository

You can choose the way your repository appears by customizing your repository.

About READMEs

You can add a README file to your repository to tell other people why your project is useful, what they can do with your project, and how they can use it.

Licensing a repository

Public repositories on GitHub are often used to share open source software. For your repository to truly be open source, you'll need to license it so that others are free to use, change, and distribute the software.

Displaying a sponsor button in your repository

You can add a sponsor button in your repository to increase the visibility of funding options for your open source project.

Customizing your repository's social media preview

You can customize the image displayed on social media platforms when someone links to your repository.

Classifying your repository with topics

To help other people find and contribute to your project, you can add topics to your repository related to your project's intended purpose, subject area, affinity groups, or other important qualities.

About code owners

You can use a CODEOWNERS file to define individuals or teams that are responsible for code in a repository.

About repository languages

The files and directories within a repository determine the languages that make up the repository. You can view a repository's languages to get a quick overview of the repository.

About CITATION files

You can add a CITATION file to your repository to help users correctly cite your software.