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Restricting repository creation in your organization

To protect your organization's data, you can configure permissions for creating repositories in your organization.

You can choose whether members and GitHub Apps can create repositories in your organization. If you allow members and GitHub Apps to create repositories, you can choose whether they can create both public and private repositories or public repositories only. Organization owners can always create any type of repository.

Organizations using GitHub Enterprise Cloud can also restrict members to creating private repositories only. For more information, see the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.

Organization owners can restrict the type of repositories members can create to private to help prevent sensitive information from being exposed. For more information, see "Best practices for preventing data leaks in your organization."

Warning: This setting restricts the visibility options available when repositories are created, but does not prevent changing the visibility of existing repositories. For more information about restricting changes to existing repositories' visibilities, see "Restricting repository visibility changes in your organization."

  1. In the upper-right corner of GitHub.com, select your profile photo, then click Your organizations.

    Screenshot of the dropdown menu under @octocat's profile picture. "Your organizations" is outlined in dark orange.

  2. Next to the organization, click Settings.

  3. In the "Access" section of the sidebar, click Member privileges.

  4. Under "Repository creation", select one or more options.

    Note: To restrict members to creating private repositories only, your organization must use GitHub Enterprise Cloud. For more information about how you can try GitHub Enterprise Cloud for free, see "Setting up a trial of GitHub Enterprise Cloud."

  5. Click Save.