About repository visibility changes
Organization owners can restrict the ability to change repository visibility to organization owners only. For more information, see "Restricting repository visibility changes in your organization."
We recommend reviewing the following caveats before you change the visibility of a repository.
Making a repository private
- GitHub will detach public forks of the public repository and put them into a new network. Public forks are not made private.
- If you're using GitHub Free for personal accounts or organizations, some features won't be available in the repository after you change the visibility to private. Any published GitHub Pages site will be automatically unpublished. If you added a custom domain to the GitHub Pages site, you should remove or update your DNS records before making the repository private, to avoid the risk of a domain takeover. For more information, see "GitHub’s plans and "Managing a custom domain for your GitHub Pages site."
- GitHub will no longer include the repository in the GitHub Archive Program. For more information, see "About archiving content and data on GitHub."
- GitHub Advanced Security features, such as code scanning, will stop working. For more information, see "About GitHub Advanced Security."
Making a repository public
- GitHub will detach private forks and turn them into a standalone private repository. For more information, see "What happens to forks when a repository is deleted or changes visibility?"
- If you're converting your private repository to a public repository as part of a move toward creating an open source project, see the Open Source Guides for helpful tips and guidelines. You can also take a free course on managing an open source project with GitHub Skills. Once your repository is public, you can also view your repository's community profile to see whether your project meets best practices for supporting contributors. For more information, see "About community profiles for public repositories."
- The repository will automatically gain access to GitHub Advanced Security features.
- Attachments uploaded to the repository's issues and pull requests will become inaccessible until the repository is made private again or the attachments are reuploaded. This is a temporary limitation that GitHub is working to resolve.
For information about improving repository security, see "Securing your repository."
Changing a repository's visibility
- On GitHub.com, navigate to the main page of the repository.
- Under your repository name, click Settings. If you cannot see the "Settings" tab, select the dropdown menu, then click Settings.
- In the "Danger Zone" section, to the right of to "Change repository visibility", click Change visibility.
- Select a visibility.
- To verify that you're changing the correct repository's visibility, type the name of the repository you want to change the visibility of.
- Click I understand, change repository visibility.
