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Enabling unified search for your enterprise

You can allow users to include repositories on GitHub Enterprise Cloud in their search results when searching from your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

Who can use this feature?

Enterprise owners

In this article

When you enable unified search, users can view search results from content on GitHub.com when searching from your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

You can choose to allow search results for public repositories on GitHub.com, and you can separately choose to allow search results for private repositories on GitHub Enterprise Cloud. If you enable unified search for private repositories, users can only search private repositories that they have access to and that are owned by the connected enterprise account. For more information, see About searching on GitHub.

Users will never be able to search your GitHub Enterprise Server instance from GitHub Enterprise Cloud, even if they have access to both environments.

After you enable unified search for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, before individual users can see search results from private repositories on GitHub Enterprise Cloud in your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, each user must also connect their user account on GitHub Enterprise Server with a user account on GitHub Enterprise Cloud. For more information, see Enabling repository search across environments.

Searching via the REST and GraphQL APIs does not include GitHub Enterprise Cloud search results. Advanced search and searching for wikis in GitHub Enterprise Cloud are not supported.

Before you can enable unified search, you must enable GitHub Connect. See Enabling GitHub Connect for GitHub.com.

  1. Sign in to GitHub Enterprise Server and GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

  2. From an administrative account on GitHub Enterprise Server, in the upper-right corner of any page, click .

  3. If you're not already on the "Site admin" page, in the upper-left corner, click Site admin.

  4. In the left sidebar, click Enterprise overview.

  5. In the enterprise account sidebar, click GitHub Connect.

  6. To the right of "Unified search", click Enable.

    Screenshot of the "Unified search" option on the GitHub Connect page. The "Enable" button is highlighted with an orange outline.

  7. Optionally, to the right of "Users can search private repositories on ENTERPRISE ACCOUNT when searching from Enterprise Server", click Enable.

    Screenshot of the "Unified search" option on the GitHub Connect page. To the right of the setting to allow search of private repositories, the "Enable" button is highlighted with an orange outline.