Manage projects

Most work in GitLab is done in a project. Files and code are saved in projects, and most features are in the scope of projects.

Project overview

When you select a project, the Project overview page shows the project contents:

• Files in the repository
• Project information (description)
• Topics
• Badges
• Number of stars, forks, commits, branches, tags, releases, and environments in the project
• Project storage size
• Optional files and configurations
• README or index file
  • Wiki page
  • License
  • Changelog
  • Contributing guidelines
  • Kubernetes cluster
  • CI/CD configuration
  • Integrations
  • GitLab Pages
• Creation date

For public projects, and members of internal and private projects with permissions to view the project’s code, the project overview page shows:

• A README or index file.
• A list of directories in the project’s repository.

For users without permission to view the project’s code, the overview page shows:

• The wiki homepage.
• The list of issues in the project.

You can access a project by using its ID instead of its name at https://gitlab.example.com/projects/<id>. For example, if in your personal namespace alex you have a project my-project with the ID 123456, you can access the project either at https://gitlab.example.com/alex/my-project or https://gitlab.example.com/projects/123456.

Find the Project ID

You might also need the project ID if you want to interact with the project using the GitLab API.

To find the project ID:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. On the project overview page, in the upper-right corner, select Actions ( ).
3. Select Copy project ID.

View all projects for the instance

To view all projects for the GitLab instance:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
2. Select Explore.

On the left sidebar, Projects is selected. A list of all projects for the instance is displayed.

If you are not authenticated, the list shows public projects only.

View projects you have contributed to

The Contributed tab displays projects where you have:

• Created issues, merge requests, or epics
• Commented on issues, merge requests, or epics
• Closed issues, merge requests, or epics
• Pushed commits
• Approved merge requests
• Merged merge requests

To view projects you have contributed to:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
2. Select View all my projects.
3. Select the Contributed tab.

View projects you are a member of

To view projects you are a member of:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
2. Select View all my projects.
3. Select the Yours tab.

View personal projects

Personal projects are projects created under your personal namespace.

For example, if you create an account with the username alex, and create a project called my-project under your username, the project is created at https://gitlab.example.com/alex/my-project.

To view your personal projects:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
2. Select View all my projects.
3. Select the Personal tab.

Or

1. On the left sidebar, select your avatar and then your username.
2. On the left sidebar, select Personal projects.

View starred projects

To view projects you have starred:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
2. Select View all my projects.
3. Select the Starred tab.

Or

1. On the left sidebar, select your avatar and then your username.
2. On the left sidebar, select Starred projects.

Edit project name and description

Use the project general settings to edit your project details.

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the project.

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. In the Project name text box, enter your project name. See the limitations on project names.
4. Optional. In the Project description text box, enter your project description. The description is limited to 2,000 characters. Components published in the CI/CD catalog require a project description.
5. Select Save changes.

Add a project avatar

Add a project avatar to help visually identify your project. If you do not add an avatar, GitLab displays the first letter of your project name as the default project avatar.

To add a project avatar, use one of the following methods:

• Add a logo to your repository.
• Upload an avatar in your project settings.

Add a logo to your repository

If you haven’t uploaded an avatar to your project settings, GitLab looks for a file named logo in your repository to use as the default project avatar.

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the project.
• Your file must be 200 KB or smaller. The ideal image size is 192 x 192 pixels.
• The file must be named logo with the extension .png, .jpg, or .gif. For example, logo.gif.

To add a logo file to use as your project avatar:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. In the root of your project repository, upload the logo file.

Upload an avatar in project settings

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the project.
• Your file must be 200 KB or smaller. The ideal image size is 192 x 192 pixels.
• The image must be one of the following file types:
  • .bmp
  • .gif
  • .ico
  • .jpeg
  • .png
  • .tiff

To upload an avatar in your project settings:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. In the Project avatar section, select Choose file.
4. Select your avatar file.
5. Select Save changes.

Star a project

You can star projects you use frequently to make them easier to find.

To star a project:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. In the upper-right corner of the page, select Star.

Transfer a project

Transfer a project to move it to a different group. A project transfer includes:

• Project components:

  • Issues
  • Merge requests
  • Pipelines
  • Dashboards

• Project members:

  • Direct members
  • Membership invitations

  Members with inherited membership in the project lose access unless they are also members of the target group. The project inherits new member permissions from the group you transfer it to.

The project’s path also changes, so make sure to update the URLs to the project components where necessary.

New project-level labels are created for issues and merge requests if matching group labels don’t already exist in the target namespace.

If a project contains issues assigned to an epic, and that epic is not available in the target group, GitLab creates a copy of the epic in the target group. When you transfer multiple projects with issues assigned to the same epic, GitLab creates a separate copy of that epic in the target group for each project.

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the group you are transferring to.

• You must be the Owner of the project you transfer.

• The group must allow creation of new projects.

• For projects where the container registry is enabled:

  • On GitLab.com: You can only transfer projects within the same top-level namespace.
  • On GitLab Self-Managed: The project must not contain container images.

• The project must not have a security policy. If a security policy is assigned to the project, it is automatically unassigned during the transfer.

• If the root namespace changes, you must remove npm packages that follow the naming convention from the project. After you transfer the project you can either:

  • Update the package scope with the new root namespace path, and publish it again to the project.
  • Republish the package to the project without updating the root namespace path, which causes the package to no longer follow the naming convention. If you republish the package without updating the root namespace path, it will not be available for the instance endpoint.

To transfer a project:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Advanced.
4. Under Transfer project, choose the namespace to transfer the project to.
5. Select Transfer project.
6. Enter the project’s name and select Confirm.

You are redirected to the project’s new page and GitLab applies a redirect. For more information about repository redirects, see repository path changes.

Transfer a GitLab.com project to a different subscription tier

When you transfer a project from a namespace licensed for GitLab.com Premium or Ultimate to GitLab Free:

• Project access tokens are revoked.
• Pipeline subscriptions and test cases are deleted.

Delete a project

You can schedule a project for deletion. By default, when you delete a project for the first time, it enters a pending deletion state. Delete a project again to remove it immediately.

On GitLab.com, after a project is deleted, its data is retained for seven days.

Prerequisites:

• You must have the Owner role for a project.
• Owners must be allowed to delete projects.

To delete a project:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Advanced.
4. In the Delete project section, select Delete project.
5. On the confirmation dialog, enter the project name and select Yes, delete project.
6. Optional. To delete the project immediately, repeat these steps.

You can also delete projects using the Rails console.

If the user who scheduled the project deletion loses access to the project before the deletion occurs (for example, by leaving the project, having their role downgraded, or being banned from the project), the deletion job restores the project. However, if the user regains access before the deletion job runs, the job removes the project permanently.

View projects pending deletion

To view a list of all projects that are pending deletion:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
2. Select View all my projects.
3. Select the Inactive tab.

Each project in the list shows:

• A badge indicating that the project has been marked for deletion.
• The time the project was marked for deletion.
• The time the project is scheduled for final deletion.
• A Restore action to stop the project being eventually deleted.

Restore a project

Prerequisites:

• You must have the Owner role for the project.

To restore a project pending deletion:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Advanced.
4. In the Restore project section, select Restore project.

Archive a project

When you archive a project, some features become read-only. These features are still accessible, but not writable.

• Repository
• Packages
• Issues
• Merge requests
• Feature flags
• Pull mirroring
• All other project features

Active pipeline schedules of archived projects don’t become read-only.

If the project has deployed Pages, they are removed along with any custom domains, and the Pages link is no longer accessible.

Archived projects are:

• Labeled with an archived badge on the project page.
• Listed in the Inactive tab on the group page, Your work page, and Explore page.
• Read-only.

Prerequisites:

• Deactivate or delete any active pipeline schedules for the project.

To archive a project:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Advanced.
4. In the Archive project section, select Archive project.
5. To confirm, select OK.

Unarchive a project

When you unarchive a project, the read-only restriction is removed, and the project becomes available in project lists.

Prerequisites:

• You must be an administrator or have the Owner role for the project.

1. Find the archived project.
   1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
   2. Select View all my projects.
   3. Select Explore projects.
   4. In the Sort projects dropdown list, select Show archived projects.
   5. In the Filter by name field, enter the project name.
   6. Select the project link.
2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Under Advanced, select Expand.
4. In the Unarchive project section, select Unarchive project.
5. To confirm, select OK.

The deployed Pages are not restored and you must rerun the pipeline.

When a project is unarchived, its pull mirroring process will automatically resume.

View project activity

To view the activity of a project:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.

2. Select Manage > Activity.

3. Optional. To filter activity by contribution type, select a tab:

   • All: All contributions by project members.
   • Push events: Push events in the project.
   • Merge events: Accepted merge requests in the project.
   • Issue events: Issues opened and closed in the project.
   • Comments: Comments posted by project members.
   • Designs: Designs added, updated, and removed in the project.
   • Team: Members who joined and left the project.

Event time period limit

GitLab removes project activity events older than 3 years from the events table for performance reasons.

Search in projects

To search through your projects, on the left sidebar, select Search or go to. GitLab filters as you type.

You can also look for the projects you starred (Starred projects).

You can Explore all public and internal projects available in GitLab.com, from which you can filter by visibility, through Trending, best rated with Most stars, or All of them.

You can sort projects by:

• Name
• Created date
• Updated date
• Stars

Filter projects by language

You can filter projects by the programming language they use. To do this:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
2. Select either:
   • View all your projects, to filter your projects.
   • Explore, to filter all projects you can access.
3. Above the list of projects, select Search or filter results.
4. From the Language dropdown list, select the language you want to filter projects by.

A list of projects that use the selected language is displayed.

View only projects you own

To view only the projects you are the owner of:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to.
2. Select either:
   • View all your projects, to filter your projects.
   • Explore, to filter all projects you can access.
3. Above the list of projects, select Search or filter results.
4. From the Role dropdown list, select Owner.

Rename a repository

A project’s repository name defines its URL.

Prerequisites:

• You must be an administrator or have the Maintainer or Owner role for the project.

To rename a repository:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Advanced.
4. In the Change path text box, edit the path.
5. Select Change path.

Leave a project

When you leave a project:

• You are no longer a project member and cannot contribute.
• All the issues and merge requests that were assigned to you are unassigned.

Prerequisites:

• You can leave a project this way only when a project is part of a group under a group namespace.
• You must be a direct member of the project.

To leave a project:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. On the project overview page, in the upper-right corner, select Actions ( ).
3. Select Leave project, then Leave project again.

Add a compliance framework to a project

You can add compliance frameworks to projects in a group that has a compliance framework.

Manage project access through LDAP groups

You can use LDAP to manage group membership.

You cannot use LDAP groups to manage project access, but you can use the following workaround.

Prerequisites:

• You must integrate LDAP with GitLab.
• You must be an administrator.

1. Create a group to track membership of your project.
2. Set up LDAP synchronization for that group.
3. To use LDAP groups to manage access to a project, add the LDAP-synchronized group as a member to the project.

Project aliases

GitLab repositories are usually accessed with a namespace and a project name. When migrating frequently accessed repositories to GitLab, however, you can use project aliases to access those repositories with the original name. Accessing repositories through a project alias reduces the risk associated with migrating such repositories.

This feature is only available on Git over SSH. Also, only GitLab administrators can create project aliases, and they can only do so through the API. For more information, see the Project Aliases API documentation.

After an administrator creates an alias for a project, you can use the alias to clone the repository. For example, if an administrator creates the alias gitlab for the project https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab, you can clone the project with git clone git@gitlab.com:gitlab.git instead of git clone git@gitlab.com:gitlab-org/gitlab.git.

Related topics

• Import a project.
• Connect an external repository to GitLab CI/CD.
• Fork a project.
• Adjust project visibility and permissions.
• Rules for project and group names