• Ban and unban users
  • Unban a user
  • Ban a user
• Automatically remove dormant members

Moderate users

This section describes how to moderate users at the group level. For self-managed instances, see the administration documentation.

If you have the Owner role for the group, to moderate user access you can approve, ban, or automatically remove dormant members.

Ban and unban users

A group Owner can moderate user access by banning and unbanning users. You should ban a user when you want to block them from the group.

A banned user:

• Cannot access the group or any of repositories.
• Cannot use slash commands.
• Does not occupy a seat.

Unban a user

To unban a user with the GraphQL API, see Mutation.namespaceBanDestroy.

For a demo on unbanning a user at the group level, see Namespace level ban - Unbanning a user.

Prerequisites:

• In the top-level group, you must have the Owner role.

To unban a user:

1. Go to the top-level group.
2. On the left sidebar, select Manage > Members.
3. Select the Banned tab.
4. For the account you want to unban, select Unban.

Ban a user

For a demo on banning a user at the group level, see Namespace level ban - Banning a user.

Prerequisites:

• In the top-level group, you must have the Owner role.
• In the top-level group, if the user you want to ban has the Owner role, you must demote the user.

To manually ban a user:

1. Go to the top-level group.
2. On the left sidebar, select Manage > Members.
3. Next to the member you want to ban, select the vertical ellipsis ().
4. From the dropdown list, select Ban member.

Automatically remove dormant members

Prerequisites:

• You must have the Owner role for the group.

You can enable automatic removal of group members who either:

• Were added to the group more than a week ago and have no activity in the group.
• Have no activity in the group for a specified period of time. The default and minimum is 90 days. Activities involve:
  • Git HTTP/SSH activities, such as clone and push.
  • Visiting pages related to dashboards, projects, issues, merge requests, settings, and so on.
  • Using the API in the scope of the group.
  • Using the GraphQL API in the scope of the group.

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Permissions and group features.
4. Scroll to Dormant members.
5. Select the Remove dormant members after a period of inactivity checkbox.
6. In the Days of inactivity before removal field, enter the number of days before removal. The minimum is 90 days.
7. Select Save changes.

After the member has reached the days of inactivity and is removed from the group:

• They still have access to GitLab.com.
• They do not have access to the group.
• Contributions made to the group are still assigned to the removed member.