User account (FREE ALL)

Each GitLab account has a user profile, which contains information about you and your GitLab activity.

Your profile also includes settings, which you use to customize your GitLab experience.

Access your user profile

To access your profile:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select your name or username.

Access your user settings

To access your user settings:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.

Change your username

Your username has a unique namespace, which is updated when you change your username. Before you change your username, read about how redirects behave. If you do not want to update the namespace, you can create a new user or group and transfer projects to it instead.

Prerequisites:

Your namespace must not:
- Contain a project with Container Registry tags.
- Have a project that hosts GitLab Pages. For more information, see changing your username in the GitLab Team Handbook.
Your username must be between 2 and 255 characters in length, and must not:
- Contain special characters or emoji.
- End with .<reserved file extension>, for example jon.png. However, jonpng is valid.

To change your username:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
On the left sidebar, select Account.
In the Change username section, enter a new username as the path.
Select Update username.

Add emails to your user profile

To add new email to your account:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
On the left sidebar, select Emails.
Select Add new email.
In the Email text box, enter the new email.
Select Add email address.
Verify your email address with the verification email received.

Make your user profile page private

You can make your user profile visible to only you and GitLab administrators.

To make your profile private:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
Select the Private profile checkbox.
Select Update profile settings.

The following is hidden from your user profile page (https://gitlab.example.com/username):

Atom feed
Date when account was created
Tabs for activity, groups, contributed projects, personal projects, starred projects, snippets

NOTE: Making your user profile page private does not hide all your public resources from the REST or GraphQL APIs. For example, the email address associated with your commit signature is accessible unless you use an automatically-generated private commit email.

User visibility

The public page of a user, located at /username, is always visible whether you are signed-in or not.

When visiting the public page of a user, you can only see the projects which you have privileges to.

If the public level is restricted, user profiles are only visible to authenticated users.

Add details to your profile with a README

Introduced in GitLab 14.5.

You can add more information to your profile page with a README file. When you populate the README file with information, it's included on your profile page.

From a new project

To create a new project and add its README to your profile:

On the left sidebar, at the top, select Create new ({plus}) and New project/repository.
Select Create blank project.
Enter the project details:
- In the Project name field, enter the name for your new project.
- In the Project URL field, select your GitLab username.
- In the Project slug field, enter your GitLab username.
For Visibility Level, select Public.
For Project Configuration, ensure Initialize repository with a README is selected.
Select Create project.
Create a README file inside this project. The file can be any valid README or index file.
Populate the README file with Markdown, or another supported markup language.

GitLab displays the contents of your README below your contribution graph.

From an existing project

To add the README from an existing project to your profile, update the path of the project to match your username.

Add external accounts to your user profile page

You can add links to certain other external accounts you might have, like Skype and Twitter. They can help other users connect with you on other platforms.

To add links to other accounts:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Main settings section, add your:
- Discord user ID.
- LinkedIn profile name.
- Skype username.
- Twitter @username.
Your user ID or username must be 500 characters or less.
Select Update profile settings.

Show private contributions on your user profile page

In the user contribution calendar graph and recent activity list, you can see your contribution actions to private projects.

To show private contributions:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Main settings section, select the Include private contributions on my profile checkbox.
Select Update profile settings.

Add your gender pronouns

Introduced in GitLab 14.0.

You can add your gender pronouns to your GitLab account to be displayed next to your name in your profile.

To specify your pronouns:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Pronouns text box, enter your pronouns. The text must be 50 characters or less.
Select Update profile settings.

Add your name pronunciation

Introduced in GitLab 14.2.

You can add your name pronunciation to your GitLab account. This is displayed in your profile, below your name.

To add your name pronunciation:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Pronunciation text box, enter how your name is pronounced. The pronunciation must be plain text and 255 characters or less.
Select Update profile settings.

Set your current status

Introduced in GitLab 13.10, users can schedule the clearing of their status.

You can provide a custom status message for your user profile along with an emoji that describes it. This may be helpful when you are out of office or otherwise not available.

Your status is publicly visible even if your profile is private.

To set your current status:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Set status or, if you have already set a status, Edit status.
Set the desired emoji and status message. Status messages must be plain text and 100 characters or less. They can also contain emoji codes like, I'm on vacation :palm_tree:.
Select a value from the Clear status after dropdown list.
Select Set status. Alternatively, you can select Remove status to remove your user status entirely.

You can also set your current status from your user settings or by using the API.

If you select the Busy checkbox, remember to clear it when you become available again.

Set a busy status indicator

Introduced in GitLab 13.6.

It was deployed behind a feature flag, disabled by default.

Became enabled by default in GitLab 13.8.

Feature flag removed in GitLab 13.12.

To indicate to others that you are busy, you can set an indicator.

To set the busy status indicator, either:

Set it directly:
1. On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
2. Select Set status or, if you have already set a status, Edit status.
3. Select the Set yourself as busy checkbox.
Set it on your profile:
1. On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
2. Select Edit profile.
3. In the Current status section, select the Set yourself as busy checkbox.
The busy status is displayed next to your name, every time your name is shown in the user interface.

Set your time zone

You can set your local time zone to:

Display your local time on your profile, and in places where hovering over your name shows information about you.
Align your contribution calendar with your local time to better reflect when your contributions were made (introduced in GitLab 14.5).

To set your time zone:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Time settings section, select your time zone from the dropdown list.

Change the email displayed on your commits

A commit email is an email address displayed in every Git-related action carried out through the GitLab interface.

Any of your own verified email addresses can be used as the commit email. Your primary email is used by default.

To change your commit email:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Commit email dropdown list, select an email address.
Select Update profile settings.

Change your primary email

Your primary email is the default email address for your login, commit email, and notification email.

To change your primary email:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Email field, enter your new email address.
Select Update profile settings.
Optional. Select the confirmation email if you have not previously added this email to your GitLab.com account.

Set your public email

You can select one of your configured email addresses to be displayed on your public profile:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Public email field, select one of the available email addresses.
Select Update profile settings.

Use an automatically-generated private commit email

GitLab provides an automatically-generated private commit email address, so you can keep your email information private.

To use a private commit email:

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
In the Commit email dropdown list, select Use a private email.
Select Update profile settings.

Every Git-related action uses the private commit email.

To stay fully anonymous, you can also copy the private commit email and configure it on your local machine by using the following command:

git config --global user.email <your email address>

Follow users

You can follow or unfollow users from either:

Their user profiles.
The small popover that appears when you hover over a user's name (introduced in GitLab 15.0).

In GitLab 15.5 and later, the maximum number of users you can follow is 300.

Disable following and being followed by other users

Introduced in GitLab 16.0 with a flag named disable_follow_users.

Feature flag removed in GitLab 16.3.

You can disable following and being followed by other users.

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
Select Preferences.
Clear the Enable follow users checkbox.
Select Save changes.

NOTE: When this feature is being disabled, all current followed/following connections are deleted.

Advanced code search with zoekt

Disable searching code with zoekt

Introduced as a beta feature with a flag named search_code_with_zoekt. Enabled by default.

You can disable searching with Zoekt and use Elasticsearch instead.

On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
Select Edit profile.
Select Preferences.
Clear the Enable advanced code search checkbox.
Select Save changes.

View a user's activity

GitLab tracks user contribution activity. To view a user's activity:

Go to the user's profile.
In the GitLab menu, select Activity.

A list of Most Recent Activity contributions is displayed.

View your activity

To view your activity:

On the left sidebar, expand the top-most chevron ({chevron-down}).
Select Your work.
Select Activity.
Optional. To filter your activity by contribution type, in the Your Activity tab, select a tab:
- All: All contributions you made in your groups and projects.
- Push events: Push events you made in your projects.
- Merge events: Merge requests you accepted in your projects.
- Issue events: Issues you opened and closed in your projects.
- Comments: Comments you posted in your projects.
- Wiki: Wiki pages you created and updated in your projects.
- Designs: Designs you added, updated, and removed in your projects.
- Team: Projects you joined and left.

Session duration

Stay signed in for two weeks

By default, you are signed out of GitLab after seven days (10080 minutes) of inactivity or until you close your browser window, whichever comes first.

GitLab administrators can change this default.

Stay signed in indefinitely

Ability to turn the Remember me setting on and off introduced in GitLab 16.0.

To remain signed in indefinitely, select the Remember me checkbox on the GitLab sign-in page.

You remain signed in because, although the server sets a session time of one week, your browser stores a secure token that enables automatic reauthentication.

GitLab administrators can turn off the Remember me setting for environments that require sessions to expire periodically for security or compliance purposes.

Cookies used for sign-in

Introduced in GitLab 13.1.

When you sign in, three cookies are set:

A session cookie called _gitlab_session. This cookie has no set expiration date. However, it expires based on its session_expire_delay.
A session cookie called about_gitlab_active_user. This cookie is used by the marketing site to determine if a user has an active GitLab session. No user information is passed to the cookie and it expires with the session.
A persistent cookie called remember_user_token, which is set only if you selected Remember me on the sign-in page.

When you close your browser, the _gitlab_session and about_gitlab_active_user cookies are usually cleared client-side. When it expires or isn't available, GitLab:

Uses the remember_user_tokencookie to get you a new _gitlab_session cookie and keep you signed in, even if you close your browser.
Sets the about_gitlab_active_user to true.

When both the remember_user_token and _gitlab_session cookies are gone or expired, you must sign in again.

NOTE: When any session is signed out, or when a session is revoked from the active sessions list, all Remember me tokens are revoked. While other sessions remain active, the Remember me feature doesn't restore a session if the browser is closed or the existing session expires.