GitLab Admin area

The Admin area provides a web UI to manage and configure features of a GitLab Self-Managed instance. If you are an administrator, to access the Admin area:

• In GitLab 17.3 and later: on the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
• In GitLab 16.7 and later: on the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin area.
• In GitLab 16.1 and later: on the left sidebar, select Search or go to, then select Admin.
• In GitLab 16.0 and earlier: on the top bar, select Main menu > Admin.

If the GitLab instance uses Admin Mode, you must enable Admin Mode for your session before Admin is visible.

Administering projects

To administer all projects in the GitLab instance from the Admin area’s Projects page:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.

2. Select Overview > Projects.

3. Select the All, Private, Internal, or Public tab to list only projects of that criteria.

4. Optional. Combine these filter and sort options to find your desired projects:

   • Select Filter by name. Enter the project name you want to find, and GitLab filters projects as you enter text.

   • Select Sort by to sort projects by:

     • Updated date
     • Last created
     • Name
     • Most stars
     • Oldest created
     • Oldest updated
     • Largest repository

   • Select Sort by to filter projects:

     • Hide (or show) archived projects
     • Show archived projects only
     • Owned by anyone
     • Owned by me

   • To filter to projects in a namespace, select Namespace. Enter text to filter for your desired namespace, then select it.

Edit a project

To edit a project’s name or description from the Admin area’s Projects page:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Projects.
3. Next to the project you want to edit, select Edit.
4. Edit the Project name or Project description.
5. Select Save Changes.

Delete a project

To delete a project:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Projects.
3. Next to the project you want to edit, select Delete.

Administering users

The Admin area’s Users page shows this information for each user:

• Username
• Email address
• Project membership count
• Group membership count
• Date of account creation
• Date of last activity

To administer all users from the Admin area’s Users page:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.

2. Select Overview > Users.

3. Optional. To change the sort order, which defaults to user name:

   1. Select the sort dropdown list.
   2. Select the desired order.

4. Optional. Use the user search box to search and filter users by:

   • User access level.
   • Whether two-factor authentication is enabled or disabled.
   • User state.

5. Optional. In the user search field, enter text, then press Enter. This case-insensitive text search applies partial matching to name, username, and email.

To edit a user, find the user’s row and select Edit.

Delete a user

To delete the user, or delete the user and their contributions, from the Admin area’s Users page:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Users.
3. Find the user you want to delete. In the row, select User administration ( ), then select the desired option.

User impersonation

An administrator can impersonate any other user, including other administrators. This enables you to see what the user sees in GitLab, and take actions on behalf of the user.

To impersonate a user:

• Through the UI:
  1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Overview > Users.
  3. From the list of users, select a user.
  4. On the top right, select Impersonate.
• With the API, using impersonation tokens.

All impersonation activities are captured with audit events. By default, impersonation is enabled. GitLab can be configured to disable impersonation.

User identities

When using authentication providers, administrators can see the identities for a user. This page shows the user’s identities, including SCIM identities. Use this information to troubleshoot SCIM-related issues and confirm the identities being used for an account.

To do this:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Users.
3. From the list of users, select a user.
4. Select Identities.

User permission export

When you export user permissions, the exported information shows the direct membership users have in groups and projects. It includes this data, and is limited to the first 100,000 users:

• Username
• Email
• Type
• Path
• Access level (Project and Group)
• Date of last activity. For a list of activities that populate this column, see the Users API documentation.

To export user permissions for all active users in your GitLab instance:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Users.
3. On the top right, select Export permissions as CSV ( ).

Users statistics

The Users statistics page provides an overview of user accounts by role. These statistics are calculated daily. User changes made after the last update are not reflected. These totals are also included:

• Billable users
• Blocked users
• Total users

GitLab billing is based on the number of billable users.

Add email to user

To add email addresses to user accounts manually:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Users.
3. Locate the user and select them.
4. Select Edit.
5. In Email, enter the new email address. This adds the new email address to the user and sets the previous email address to be a secondary.
6. Select Save changes.

User cohorts

The Cohorts tab displays the monthly cohorts of new users and their activities over time.

Prevent a user from creating top-level groups

By default, users can create top-level groups. To prevent a user from creating a top-level group:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Users.
3. Locate the user and select them.
4. Select Edit.
5. Clear the Can create top-level group checkbox.
6. Select Save changes.

It is also possible to limit which roles can create a subgroup of another group.

Administering groups

To administer all groups in the GitLab instance:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.

2. Select Overview > Groups. The page shows the group’s:

   • Name.
   • Description.
   • Size.
   • Number of projects in the group.
   • Member count.
   • Privacy level: whether the group is private, internal, or public.

3. To manage a group, find the group’s row and select Edit or Delete.

4. Optional. To change the sort order, select the sort dropdown list and choose the desired order. The available sort options are:

   • Created date (default).
   • Updated date.
   • Storage size. This option sorts groups by the total storage used, including Git repositories and Large File Storage (LFS) for all projects in the group. For more information, see usage quotas.

5. Optional. To search for groups by name, enter your criteria in the search field. The group search is case-insensitive, and applies partial matching.

6. Optional. To create a new group select New group.

Administering topics

Categorize and find similar projects with topics.

View all topics

To view all topics in the GitLab instance:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Topics.

For each topic, the page displays its name and the number of projects labeled with the topic.

Search for topics

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Topics.
3. In the search box, enter your search criteria. The topic search is case-insensitive and applies partial matching.

Create a topic

To create a topic:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Topics.
3. Select New topic.
4. Enter the Topic slug (name) and Topic title.
5. Optional. Enter a Description and add a Topic avatar.
6. Select Save changes.

The created topics are displayed on the Explore topics page.

The assigned topics are visible only to everyone with access to the project, but everyone can see which topics exist on the GitLab instance. Do not include sensitive information in the name of a topic.

Edit a topic

You can edit a topic’s name, title, description, and avatar at any time. To edit a topic:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Topics.
3. Select Edit in that topic’s row.
4. Edit the topic slug (name), title, description, or avatar.
5. Select Save changes.

Remove a topic

If you no longer need a topic, you can permanently remove it. To remove a topic:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Topics.
3. To remove a topic, select Remove in that topic’s row.

Merge topics

You can move all projects assigned to a topic to another topic. The source topic is then permanently deleted. After a merged topic is deleted, you cannot restore it.

To merge topics:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Topics.
3. Select Merge topics.
4. From the Source topic dropdown list, select the topic you want to merge and remove.
5. From the Target topic dropdown list, select the topic you want to merge the source topic into.
6. Select Merge.

Administering Gitaly servers

You can list all Gitaly servers in the GitLab instance from the Admin area’s Gitaly servers page. For more details, see Gitaly.

To access the Gitaly servers page:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Gitaly servers.

The page includes this information about each Gitaly server:

Administering organizations

The Organizations page in the Admin area lists all projects by default, in reverse order of when they were last updated. Each project shows:

• Name
• Namespace
• Description
• Size, updated every 15 minutes at most

To administer all organizations in the GitLab instance from this page:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Organizations.

CI/CD section

Administering runners

To administer all runners in the GitLab instance:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select CI/CD > Runners.

This information is shown for each runner:

You can also edit, pause, or remove each runner.

For more information, see GitLab Runner.

Search and filter runners

To search runners’ descriptions:

1. In the Search or filter results text box, enter the description of the runner you want to find.
2. Press Enter.

To filter runners by status, type, and tag:

1. Select a tab or the Search or filter results text box.
2. Select any Type, or filter by Status or Tags.
3. Select or enter your search criteria.

Bulk delete runners

To delete multiple runners at the same time:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Runners.
3. To the left of the runner you want to delete, select the checkbox. To select all runners on the page, select the checkbox above the list.
4. Select Delete selected.

Administering jobs

To administer all jobs in the GitLab instance:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select CI/CD > Jobs. All jobs are listed, in descending order of job ID.
3. Select the All tab to list all jobs. Select the Pending, Running, or Finished tab to list only jobs of that status.

For each job, the following details are listed:

Monitoring section

The following topics document the Monitoring section of the Admin area.

System information

The System information page provides the following statistics:

These statistics are updated only when you go to the System information page, or you refresh the page in your browser.

Background jobs

The Background jobs page displays the Sidekiq dashboard. Sidekiq is used by GitLab to perform background processes.

The Sidekiq dashboard contains:

• A tab per jobs’ status.
• A breakdown of background job statistics.
• A live graph of Processed and Failed jobs, with a selectable polling interval.
• An historical graph of Processed and Failed jobs, with a selectable time span.
• Redis statistics, including:
  • Version number
  • Uptime, measured in days
  • Number of connections
  • Current memory usage, measured in MB
  • Peak memory usage, measured in MB

Logs

The contents of these log files can help troubleshoot a problem. The content of each log file is listed in chronological order. To minimize performance issues, a maximum 2000 lines of each log file are shown.

For details of these log files and their contents, see Log system.

The Log view has been removed from the Admin area dashboard to prevent confusion for administrators of multi-node systems. This view presents partial information for multi-node setups. For multi-node systems, ingest the logs into services like Elasticsearch and Splunk.

Audit events

The Audit events page lists changes made to the GitLab server. Use this information to control, analyze, and track every change.

Statistics

The Instance overview section of the Dashboard lists the current statistics of the GitLab instance. Retrieve this information with the Application statistics API.

These statistics show exact counts for values less than 10,000. For values of 10,000 and higher, these statistics show approximate data when TablesampleCountStrategy and ReltuplesCountStrategy strategies are used for calculations.