gitlab-org--gitlab-foss/doc/user/permissions.md

description
Understand and explore the user permission levels in GitLab, and what features each of them grants you access to.

Permissions

Users have different abilities depending on the access level they have in a particular group or project. If a user is both in a group's project and the project itself, the highest permission level is used.

On public and internal projects the Guest role is not enforced. All users will be able to create issues, leave comments, and clone or download the project code.

When a member leaves the team all the assigned Issues and Merge Requests will be unassigned automatically.

GitLab administrators receive all permissions.

To add or import a user, you can follow the project members documentation.

Principles behind permissions

See our product handbook on permissions

Instance-wide user permissions

By default, users can create top-level groups and change their usernames. A GitLab administrator can configure the GitLab instance to modify this behavior.

Project members permissions

NOTE: Note: In GitLab 11.0, the Master role was renamed to Maintainer.

The following table depicts the various user permission levels in a project.

Action	Guest	Reporter	Developer	Maintainer	Owner
Create new issue	✓ 1	✓	✓	✓	✓
Create confidential issue	✓ 1	✓	✓	✓	✓
View confidential issues	(✓) 2	✓	✓	✓	✓
Leave comments	✓ 1	✓	✓	✓	✓
Lock issue discussions		✓	✓	✓	✓
Lock merge request discussions			✓	✓	✓
See a list of jobs	✓ 3	✓	✓	✓	✓
See a job log	✓ 3	✓	✓	✓	✓
Download and browse job artifacts	✓ 3	✓	✓	✓	✓
View wiki pages	✓ 1	✓	✓	✓	✓
Create and edit wiki pages			✓	✓	✓
Delete wiki pages				✓	✓
View license management reports [ULTIMATE]	✓ 1	✓	✓	✓	✓
View Security reports [ULTIMATE]	✓ 1	✓	✓	✓	✓
View project code	1	✓	✓	✓	✓
Pull project code	1	✓	✓	✓	✓
Download project	1	✓	✓	✓	✓
Assign issues		✓	✓	✓	✓
Assign merge requests			✓	✓	✓
Label issues		✓	✓	✓	✓
Label merge requests			✓	✓	✓
Create code snippets		✓	✓	✓	✓
Manage issue tracker		✓	✓	✓	✓
Manage labels		✓	✓	✓	✓
See a commit status		✓	✓	✓	✓
See a container registry		✓	✓	✓	✓
See environments		✓	✓	✓	✓
See a list of merge requests		✓	✓	✓	✓
Manage related issues [STARTER]		✓	✓	✓	✓
Lock issue discussions		✓	✓	✓	✓
Create issue from vulnerability [ULTIMATE]		✓	✓	✓	✓
View Error Tracking list		✓	✓	✓	✓
Pull from Maven repository or NPM registry [PREMIUM]		✓	✓	✓	✓
Publish to Maven repository or NPM registry [PREMIUM]			✓	✓	✓
Lock merge request discussions			✓	✓	✓
Create new environments			✓	✓	✓
Stop environments			✓	✓	✓
Manage/Accept merge requests			✓	✓	✓
Create new merge request			✓	✓	✓
Create new branches			✓	✓	✓
Push to non-protected branches			✓	✓	✓
Force push to non-protected branches			✓	✓	✓
Remove non-protected branches			✓	✓	✓
Add tags			✓	✓	✓
Cancel and retry jobs			✓	✓	✓
Create or update commit status			✓	✓	✓
Update a container registry			✓	✓	✓
Remove a container registry image			✓	✓	✓
Create/edit/delete project milestones			✓	✓	✓
View approved/blacklisted licenses [ULTIMATE]			✓	✓	✓
Use security dashboard [ULTIMATE]			✓	✓	✓
Dismiss vulnerability [ULTIMATE]			✓	✓	✓
Apply code change suggestions			✓	✓	✓
Use environment terminals				✓	✓
Add new team members				✓	✓
Push to protected branches				✓	✓
Enable/disable branch protection				✓	✓
Turn on/off protected branch push for devs				✓	✓
Enable/disable tag protections				✓	✓
Rewrite/remove Git tags				✓	✓
Edit project				✓	✓
Add deploy keys to project				✓	✓
Configure project hooks				✓	✓
Manage Runners				✓	✓
Manage job triggers				✓	✓
Manage variables				✓	✓
Manage GitLab Pages				✓	✓
Manage GitLab Pages domains and certificates				✓	✓
Remove GitLab Pages				✓	✓
View GitLab Pages protected by access control	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Manage clusters				✓	✓
Manage license policy [ULTIMATE]				✓	✓
Edit comments (posted by any user)				✓	✓
Manage Error Tracking				✓	✓
Switch visibility level					✓
Transfer project to another namespace					✓
Remove project					✓
Delete issues					✓
Force push to protected branches 4
Remove protected branches 4
View project Audit Events				✓	✓
View project statistics		✓	✓	✓	✓

Project features permissions

Wiki and issues

Project features like wiki and issues can be hidden from users depending on which visibility level you select on project settings.

• Disabled: disabled for everyone
• Only team members: only team members will see even if your project is public or internal
• Everyone with access: everyone can see depending on your project visibility level
• Everyone: enabled for everyone (only available for GitLab Pages)

Protected branches

To prevent people from messing with history or pushing code without review, we've created protected branches. Read through the documentation on protected branches to learn more.

Additionally, you can allow or forbid users with Maintainer and/or Developer permissions to push to a protected branch. Read through the documentation on Allowed to Merge and Allowed to Push settings to learn more.

Cycle Analytics permissions

Find the current permissions on the Cycle Analytics dashboard on the documentation on Cycle Analytics permissions.

Issue Board permissions

Developers and users with higher permission level can use all the functionality of the Issue Board, that is create/delete lists and drag issues around. Read though the documentation on Issue Boards permissions to learn more.

File Locking permissions [PREMIUM]

The user that locks a file or directory is the only one that can edit and push their changes back to the repository where the locked objects are located.

Read through the documentation on permissions for File Locking to learn more.

Confidential Issues permissions

Confidential issues can be accessed by reporters and higher permission levels, as well as by guest users that create a confidential issue. To learn more, read through the documentation on permissions and access to confidential issues.

Releases permissions

Project Releases can be read by all project members (Reporters, Developers, Maintainers, Owners) except Guests. Releases can be created, updated, or deleted via Releases APIs by project Developers, Maintainers, and Owners.

Group members permissions

NOTE: Note: In GitLab 11.0, the Master role was renamed to Maintainer.

Any user can remove themselves from a group, unless they are the last Owner of the group. The following table depicts the various user permission levels in a group.

Action	Guest	Reporter	Developer	Maintainer	Owner
Browse group	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Edit group					✓
Create subgroup					✓
Create project in group			✓	✓	✓
Manage group members					✓
Remove group					✓
Manage group labels		✓	✓	✓	✓
Create/edit/delete group milestones			✓	✓	✓
View group epic [ULTIMATE]	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Create/edit group epic [ULTIMATE]		✓	✓	✓	✓
Delete group epic [ULTIMATE]					✓
View group Audit Events					✓

Subgroup permissions

When you add a member to a subgroup, they inherit the membership and permission level from the parent group. This model allows access to nested groups if you have membership in one of its parents.

To learn more, read through the documentation on subgroups memberships.

External users permissions

In cases where it is desired that a user has access only to some internal or private projects, there is the option of creating External Users. This feature may be useful when for example a contractor is working on a given project and should only have access to that project.

External users can only access projects to which they are explicitly granted access, thus hiding all other internal or private ones from them. Access can be granted by adding the user as member to the project or group.

They will, like usual users, receive a role in the project or group with all the abilities that are mentioned in the table above. They cannot however create groups or projects, and they have the same access as logged out users in all other cases.

An administrator can flag a user as external through the API or by checking the checkbox on the admin panel. As an administrator, navigate to Admin > Users to create a new user or edit an existing one. There, you will find the option to flag the user as external.

By default new users are not set as external users. This behavior can be changed by an administrator under Admin > Application Settings.

Default internal users

The "Internal users" field allows specifying an e-mail address regex pattern to identify default internal users.

New users whose email address matches the regex pattern will be set to internal by default rather than an external collaborator.

The regex pattern format is Ruby, but it needs to be convertible to JavaScript, and the ignore case flag will be set, e.g. "/regex pattern/i".

Here are some examples:

• Use \.internal@domain\.com$ to mark email addresses ending with ".internal@domain.com" internal.
• Use ^(?:(?!\.ext@domain\.com).)*$\r? to mark users with email addresses NOT including .ext@domain.com internal.

Please be aware that this regex could lead to a DOS attack, see ReDos on Wikipedia.

Auditor users [PREMIUM ONLY]

Introduced in GitLab Premium 8.17.

Auditor users are given read-only access to all projects, groups, and other resources on the GitLab instance.

An Auditor user should be able to access all projects and groups of a GitLab instance with the permissions described on the documentation on auditor users permissions.

Read more about Auditor users.

Project features

Project features like wiki and issues can be hidden from users depending on which visibility level you select on project settings.

• Disabled: disabled for everyone
• Only team members: only team members will see even if your project is public or internal
• Everyone with access: everyone can see depending on your project visibility level
• Everyone: enabled for everyone (only available for GitLab Pages)

GitLab CI/CD permissions

NOTE: Note: In GitLab 11.0, the Master role was renamed to Maintainer.

GitLab CI/CD permissions rely on the role the user has in GitLab. There are four permission levels in total:

• admin
• maintainer
• developer
• guest/reporter

The admin user can perform any action on GitLab CI/CD in scope of the GitLab instance and project. In addition, all admins can use the admin interface under /admin/runners.

Action	Guest, Reporter	Developer	Maintainer	Admin
See commits and jobs	✓	✓	✓	✓
Retry or cancel job		✓	✓	✓
Erase job artifacts and trace		✓ 5	✓	✓
Remove project			✓	✓
Create project			✓	✓
Change project configuration			✓	✓
Add specific runners			✓	✓
Add shared runners				✓
See events in the system				✓
Admin interface				✓

Job permissions

NOTE: Note: In GitLab 11.0, the Master role was renamed to Maintainer.

Note: GitLab 8.12 has a completely redesigned job permissions system. Read all about the new model and its implications.

This table shows granted privileges for jobs triggered by specific types of users:

Action	Guest, Reporter	Developer	Maintainer	Admin
Run CI job		✓	✓	✓
Clone source and LFS from current project		✓	✓	✓
Clone source and LFS from public projects		✓	✓	✓
Clone source and LFS from internal projects		✓ 6	✓ 6	✓
Clone source and LFS from private projects		✓ 7	✓ 7	✓ 7
Push source and LFS
Pull container images from current project		✓	✓	✓
Pull container images from public projects		✓	✓	✓
Pull container images from internal projects		✓ 6	✓ 6	✓
Pull container images from private projects		✓ 7	✓ 7	✓ 7
Push container images to current project		✓	✓	✓
Push container images to other projects

New CI job permissions model

GitLab 8.12 has a completely redesigned job permissions system. To learn more, read through the documentation on the new CI/CD permissions model.

Running pipelines on protected branches

The permission to merge or push to protected branches is used to define if a user can run CI/CD pipelines and execute actions on jobs that are related to those branches.

See Security on protected branches for details about the pipelines security model.

LDAP users permissions

Since GitLab 8.15, LDAP user permissions can now be manually overridden by an admin user. Read through the documentation on LDAP users permissions to learn more.

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1. On public and internal projects, all users are able to perform this action ↩︎

2. Guest users can only view the confidential issues they created themselves ↩︎

3. If Public pipelines is enabled in Project Settings > CI/CD ↩︎

4. Not allowed for Guest, Reporter, Developer, Maintainer, or Owner ↩︎

5. Only if the job was triggered by the user ↩︎

6. Only if user is not external one ↩︎

7. Only if user is a member of the project ↩︎