# Stash Latest (2.12) : Allowing public access to code

Created and last modified by pwatson on Dec 11, 2013

You can open up public access for anonymous (unauthenticated) users to projects and repositories in Stash. This allows you to:

- Broadcast your repositories to a wider audience who generally don't have access to your source.
- Utilise unauthenticated cloning of repositories when setting up continuous integration servers to work with Stash.
- Link from other systems, for example JIRA or Confluence, to give users access to code without requiring authentication.
- Create open-source projects or repositories.

Public access allows anonymous users to browse the files, pull requests and commits for a specific repository or an entire project, and to clone repositories, without needing to log in, or have an account in Stash.

In Stash, you can:

- Configure a specific repository for public access.
- Configure a project to allow public access to all repositories in the project.
- Disable anonymous access by setting a global system property.

On this page:

Related pages:

- Using project permissions
- Using repository permissions

## Making a repository publicly accessible

You can open up an specific repository for public (anonymous) access.

You need admin permission for the repository.

Go to the repository and choose Settings, then Repository (under 'Permissions'). Check Enable (under 'Public Access') to allow users without a Stash account to clone and browse the repository.

## Making a project publicly accessible

You can open up a whole project (but not a private project) for public (anonymous) access.

You need admin permission for the repository, or its project.

Go to the project and choose Settings, then Permissions. Check Enable (under 'Public Access') to allow users without a Stash account to clone and browse any repository in the project.

## Viewing public repositories

Stash displays a list of repositories for which anonymous access has been enabled.

Anonymous and logged-in users can choose Repositories > View all public repositories to see these.

## Disabling public access globally

Stash provides a system property that allows you to turn off public access for the whole instance.

To do this, set the `feature.public.access` property to false in the `stash.config.properties` file in your Stash home directory.