Hide Repository Activity View [Enhancement]

[jurakovic]

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Since discussion Repository Activity View #53140 is closed I don't know where else to ask/suggest this, so forgive me for my ignorance.

There are repository settings by which we can show or hide some features.

But there is no option to hide Repository Activity View.

As in above example, can we get setting to show or hide Activity View?

Edit, additional clarification:
IMHO this Repository Activity View poses security and privacy risk because it was introduced without possibility to hide it, and it shows deleted commits, branches, tags etc. If something is deleted, it is deleted for some valid reason and it should't be publicly visible if repository owner does not want it.

Thanks

[ViniciusMarins]

I guess it is not possible to hide only activity view in your repos, the only way is making your profile private.

Differences between private and public profiles
When your profile is private, the following content is hidden from your profile page:

Achievements and highlights.
Activity overview and activity feed.
Contribution graph.
Follower and following counts.
Follow and Sponsor buttons.
Organization memberships.
Stars, projects, packages, and sponsoring tabs.
Your pronouns.

You can make your account private easily going into your settings > public profile > scroll down until this:

Hope that can help you!

[jurakovic]

That settings affect only profile view, but not repository settings.

Some additional clarification:
IMHO this Repository Activity View poses security and privacy risk because it was introduced without possibility to hide it, and it shows deleted commits, branches, tags etc. If something is deleted, it is deleted for some valid reason and it should't be publicly visible if repository owner does not want it.

[raufzer]

I hope adding that feature, keeping your profile private is not a solution.
I have seen that GitHub users have been demanding this feature for over 3 years, but there has been no progress or help.

[daneski13]

100% agree with this. Many people expressed the same concerns in the original thread and as far as I can tell these went unanswered. Having control over this feature is a must, especially when developing in a private repo and later making it public. The most egregious is that it allows the public to view the diffs.

There should at minimum be force pushes/delete diffs only viewable to the owner and/or the ability to turn this feature off completely, if not more granular control similar to the Actions workflow runs view where you can delete individual runs.

Massive security and privacy risks, especially for people and orgs that are not fully aware of this "feature."

[RelevantContent]

I fully agree. It is really strange that it is considered a feature at all when even repo owner can't disable or limit it to certain people. Github should give option in global and repo settings to disable/limit globally or per repo respectively. I think this is a very valid demand from all github users. Due to this, I am considering shifting all repos to some other platform.

[tirthpatell]

We really do need a way to either delete/hide old activity and maybe even disable it or limit to maintainers. @thispaul
It's huge security issue otherwise if someone mistakenly pushed something.

[espwangning]

+1 Deeply in need of this

[AaronMoroney]

+1 need this

[ameaninglessname]

Repository Activity View is a critical defect for private members of an orgnization.

[ameaninglessname]

I found one way to workaround this is to delete your repository and recreate (Note: YOU WILL LOSE ALL STARS AND ALL DATA related to the repo ⚠️)

USE THIS WITH CAUTION

[ameaninglessname]

@Mishin870 Do you wanna try it 😉

[Mishin870]

Hi, that's what I did
The repository was just created, so everything is fine

[jtmusson]

I am also concerned that the Activity view enables someone to look through prior commits - even where a tool such as git-filter-repo has been used to sanitise the git history.

[Mishin870]

Accidentally noticed this menu today
It's crazy how anyone can see my force pushes that I did to hide my commit history!
Now I'm afraid to commit anything to the repository
A way to turn this off would be really nice

[Watt1234k]

@jurakovic Thank you for raising this issue. I wonder if it helps to edit the title of this page to emphasize that it's a "security risk" and "privacy risk". The current title "Hide Repository Activity View [Enhancement]" may not be enough to raise the maintainers' awareness.

Let me also @ mention one of the maintainers here. @queenofcorgis

[queenofcorgis]

Thanks everyone for the great feedback and sharing use cases and your concerns, having all these details is incredibly helpful to our team so please keep them coming.

As a member of the GitHub community, your participation is essential. While we can't promise that every suggestion will be implemented, we want to emphasize that your feedback is instrumental in guiding our decisions and priorities. I don't have an update to provide on this and just to set expectations pinging me to check in while understandable likely isn't going to yield any new information from me.