Weblate comes with a fine-grained privilege system to assign user permissions for the whole instance, or in a limited scope.
.. versionchanged:: 3.0 Before Weblate 3.0, the privilege system was based on Django privilege system only, but is specifically built for Weblate now. If using anything older, please consult the documentation for the specific version you are using.
If you are not administrating the whole Weblate installation and just have access to manage certain projects (like on Hosted Weblate), your access control management options are limited to following settings. If you don’t need any complex setup, those are sufficient for you.
You can limit user’s access to individual projects by selecting a different :guilabel:`Access control` setting. Available options are:
- Public
- Publicly visible, translatable for all logged-in users.
- Protected
- Publicly visible, but translatable only for selected users.
- Private
- Visible and translatable only for selected users.
- Custom
- :ref:`User management <manage-acl>` features will be disabled; by default all users are forbidden to performed any actions on the project. You will have to set up all the permissions using :ref:`custom-acl`.
:guilabel:`Access control` can be changed in the :guilabel:`Access` tab of the configuration (:guilabel:`Manage` ↓ :guilabel:`Settings`) of each respective project.
The default value can be changed by :setting:`DEFAULT_ACCESS_CONTROL`.
Note
Even for Private projects, some info about your project will be exposed: statistics and language summary for the whole instance will include counts for all projects despite the access control setting. Your project name and other information can’t be revealed through this.
Note
The actual set of permissions available for users by default in Public, Protected, and Private projects can be redefined by Weblate instance administrator using :ref:`custom settings <custom-acl>`.
Warning
By turning on Custom access control, Weblate will remove all :ref:`special groups <manage-acl>` it has created for a selected project. If you are doing this without admin permission for the whole Weblate instance, you will instantly lose your access to manage the project.
.. seealso:: :ref:`project-access_control`
Users with the :guilabel:`Manage project access` privilege (see :ref:`privileges`) can manage users in projects with non-Custom access control. They can assign users to one of the following groups.
For Public, Protected and Private projects:
- Administration
- Includes all permissions available for the project.
- Review (only if :ref:`review workflow <reviews>` is turned on)
- Can approve translations during review.
For Protected and Private projects only:
- Translate
- Can translate the project and upload translations made offline.
- Sources
- Can edit source strings (if allowed in the :ref:`project settings <component-manage_units>`) and source string info.
- Languages
- Can manage translated languages (add or remove translations).
- Glossary
- Can manage glossary (add or remove entries, also upload).
- Memory
- Can manage translation memory.
- Screenshots
- Can manage screenshots (add or remove them, and associate them to source strings).
- VCS
- Can manage VCS and access the exported repository.
- Billing
- Can access billing info and settings (see :ref:`billing`).
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to change this predefined set of groups for now. Also this way it’s not possible to give just some additional permissions to all users.
Note
For non-Custom access control an instance of each group described above is
actually defined for each project. The actual name of those groups will be
Project@Group
, also displayed in the Django admin interface this way.
Although they can’t be edited from Weblate user-interface.
These features are available on the :guilabel:`Access control` page, which can be accessed from the project’s menu :guilabel:`Manage` ↓ :guilabel:`Users`.
Also, besides adding an existing user to the project, it is possible to invite new ones. Any new user will be created immediately, but the account will remain inactive until signing in with a link in the invitation sent via an e-mail. It is not required to have any site-wide privileges in order to do so, access management permission on the project’s scope (e.g. a membership in the Administration group) would be sufficient.
Hint
If the invited user missed the validity of the invitation, they can set their password using invited e-mail address in the password reset form as the account is created already.
.. versionadded:: 3.11 It is possible to resend the e-mail for user invitations (invalidating any previously sent invitation).
The same kind of invitations are available site-wide from the :ref:`management interface <management-interface>` on the :guilabel:`Users` tab.
.. versionadded:: 4.7
In case some users behave badly in your project, you have an option to block them from contributing. The blocked user still will be able to see the project if he has permissions for that, but he won't be able to contribute.
You can set your projects to Protected or Private, and :ref:`manage users <manage-acl>` per-project in the Weblate user interface.
By default this prevents Weblate from granting access provided by Users and Viewers :ref:`default groups <default-groups>` due to these groups’ own configuration. This doesn’t prevent you from granting permissions to those projects site-wide by altering default groups, creating a new one, or creating additional custom settings for individual component as described in :ref:`custom-acl` below.
One of the main benefits of managing permissions through the Weblate user interface is that you can delegate it to other users without giving them the superuser privilege. In order to do so, add them to the Administration group of the project.
The permission system is based on groups and roles, where roles define a set of permissions, and groups link them to users and translations, see :ref:`auth-model` for more details.
The most powerful features of the Weblate’s access control system for now are available only through the :ref:`Django admin interface <admin-interface>`. You can use it to manage permissions of any project. You don’t necessarily have to switch it to Custom :ref:`access control <acl>` to utilize it. However you must have superuser privileges in order to use it.
If you are not interested in details of implementation, and just want to create a simple-enough configuration based on the defaults, or don’t have a site-wide access to the whole Weblate installation (like on Hosted Weblate), please refer to the :ref:`access-simple` section.
This section contains an overview of some common configurations you may be interested in.
To manage permissions for a whole instance at once, add users to appropriate :ref:`default groups <default-groups>`:
- Users (this is done by default by the :ref:`automatic group assignment <autogroup>`).
- Reviewers (if you are using :ref:`review workflow <reviews>` with dedicated reviewers).
- Managers (if you want to delegate most of the management operations to somebody else).
You should keep all projects configured as Public (see :ref:`acl`), otherwise the site-wide permissions provided by membership in the Users and Reviewers groups won’t have any effect.
You may also grant some additional permissions of your choice to the default groups. For example, you may want to give a permission to manage screenshots to all the Users.
You can define some new custom groups as well. If you want to keep managing your permissions site-wide for these groups, choose an appropriate value for the :guilabel:`Project selection` (e.g. :guilabel:`All projects` or :guilabel:`All public projects`).
You can create your own dedicated groups to manage permissions for distinct objects such as languages, components, and projects. Although these groups can only grant additional privileges, you can’t revoke any permission granted by site-wide or per-project groups by adding another custom group.
Example:
If you want (for whatever reason) to allow translation to a specific language (lets say Czech) only to a closed set of reliable translators while keeping translations to other languages public, you will have to:
Remove the permission to translate Czech from all the users. In the default configuration this can be done by altering the Users :ref:`default group <default-groups>`.
Group Users
Language selection
As defined
Languages
All but Czech
Add a dedicated group for Czech translators.
Group Czech translators
Roles
Power users
Project selection
All public projects
Language selection
As defined
Languages
Czech
- Add users you wish to give the permissions to into this group.
As you can see, permissions management this way is powerful, but can be quite a tedious job. You can’t delegate it to another user, unless granting superuser permissions.
The authentication models consist of several objects:
- Permission
- Individual permission defined by Weblate. Permissions cannot be assigned to users. This can only be done through assignment of roles.
- Role
- A role defines a set of permissions. This allows reuse of these sets in several places, making the administration easier.
- User
- User can belong to several groups.
- Group
- Group connect roles, users, and authentication objects (projects, languages, and component lists).
.. graphviz:: graph auth { "User" -- "Group"; "Group" -- "Role"; "Role" -- "Permission"; "Group" -- "Project"; "Group" -- "Language"; "Group" -- "Components"; "Group" -- "Component list"; }
Note
A group can have no roles assigned to it, in that case access to browse the project by anyone is assumed (see below).
A user has to be a member of a group linked to the project, or any component inside that project. Having membership is enough, no specific permissions are needed to browse the project (this is used in the default Viewers group, see :ref:`default-groups`).
A user can access unrestricted components once able to access the components’ project (and will have all the permissions the user was granted for the project). With :ref:`component-restricted` turned on, access to the component requires explicit permissions for the component (or a component list the component is in).
The scope of the permission assigned by the roles in the groups are applied by the following rules:
- If the group specifies any :guilabel:`Component list`, all the permissions given to members of that group are granted for all the components in the component lists attached to the group, and an access with no additional permissions is granted for all the projects these components are in. :guilabel:`Components` and :guilabel:`Projects` are ignored.
- If the group specifies any :guilabel:`Components`, all the permissions given to the members of that group are granted for all the components attached to the group, and an access with no additional permissions is granted for all the projects these components are in. :guilabel:`Projects` are ignored.
- Otherwise, if the group specifies any :guilabel:`Projects`, either by directly listing them or by having :guilabel:`Projects selection` set to a value like :guilabel:`All public projects`, all those permissions are applied to all the projects, which effectively grants the same permissions to access all projects :ref:`unrestricted components <component-restricted>`.
- The restrictions imposed by a group’s :guilabel:`Languages` are applied separately, when it’s verified if a user has an access to perform certain actions. Namely, it’s applied only to actions directly related to the translation process itself like reviewing, saving translations, adding suggestions, etc.
Hint
Use :guilabel:`Language selection` or :guilabel:`Project selection` to automate inclusion of all languages or projects.
Example:
Let’s say there is a project
foo
with the components:foo/bar
andfoo/baz
and the following group:Group Spanish Admin-Reviewers
Roles Review Strings, Manage repository Components foo/bar Languages Spanish
Members of that group will have following permissions (assuming the default role settings):
- General (browsing) access to the whole project
foo
including both components in it:foo/bar
andfoo/baz
.- Review strings in
foo/bar
Spanish translation (not elsewhere).- Manage VCS for the whole
foo/bar
repository e.g. commit pending changes made by translators for all languages.
On the bottom of the :guilabel:`Group` editing page in the :ref:`Django admin interface <admin-interface>`, you can specify :guilabel:`Automatic group assignments`, which is a list of regular expressions used to automatically assign newly created users to a group based on their e-mail addresses. This assignment only happens upon account creation.
The most common use-case for the feature is to assign all new users to some
default group. In order to do so, you will probably want to keep the default
value (^.*$
) in the regular expression field. Another use-case for this option might be to
give some additional privileges to employees of your company by default.
Assuming all of them use corporate e-mail addresses on your domain, this can
be accomplished with an expression like ^.*@mycompany.com
.
Note
Automatic group assignment to Users and Viewers is always recreated
when upgrading from one Weblate version to another. If you want to turn it off, set the regular expression to
^$
(which won’t match anything).
Note
As for now, there is no way to bulk-add already existing users to some group via the user interface. For that, you may resort to using the :ref:`REST API <api>`.
After installation, a default set of groups is created (see :ref:`default-groups`).
These roles and groups are created upon installation. The built-in roles are always kept up to date by the database migration when upgrading. You can’t actually change them, please define a new role if you want to define your own set of permissions.
Billing (see :ref:`billing`)
View billing info [Administration, Billing]
Download changes [Administration]
Post comment [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Delete comment [Administration]
Edit component settings [Administration]
Lock component, preventing translations [Administration]
Add glossary entry [Administration, Manage glossary, Power user]
Edit glossary entry [Administration, Manage glossary, Power user]
Delete glossary entry [Administration, Manage glossary, Power user]
Upload glossary entries [Administration, Manage glossary, Power user]
Use automatic suggestions [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Edit translation memory [Administration, Manage translation memory]
Delete translation memory [Administration, Manage translation memory]
Edit project settings [Administration]
Manage project access [Administration]
Download reports [Administration]
Add screenshot [Administration, Manage screenshots]
Edit screenshot [Administration, Manage screenshots]
Delete screenshot [Administration, Manage screenshots]
Edit additional string info [Administration, Edit source]
Add new string [Administration]
Remove a string [Administration]
Dismiss failing check [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Edit strings [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Review strings [Administration, Review strings]
Edit string when suggestions are enforced [Administration, Review strings]
Edit source strings [Administration, Edit source, Power user]
Accept suggestion [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Add suggestion [Administration, Edit source, Add suggestion, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Delete suggestion [Administration, Power user]
Vote on suggestion [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Add language for translation [Administration, Power user, Manage languages]
Perform automatic translation [Administration, Automatic translation]
Delete existing translation [Administration, Manage languages]
Download translation file [Administration, Edit source, Access repository, Power user, Review strings, Translate, Manage languages]
Add several languages for translation [Administration, Manage languages]
Define author of uploaded translation [Administration]
Overwrite existing strings with upload [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Upload translations [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]
Access the internal repository [Administration, Access repository, Power user, Manage repository]
Commit changes to the internal repository [Administration, Manage repository]
Push change from the internal repository [Administration, Manage repository]
Reset changes in the internal repository [Administration, Manage repository]
View upstream repository location [Administration, Access repository, Power user, Manage repository]
Update the internal repository [Administration, Manage repository]
Use management interface
Add new projects
Add language definitions
Manage language definitions
Manage groups
Manage users
Manage roles
Manage announcements
Manage translation memory
Manage component lists
Note
Site-wide privileges are not granted to any default role. These are powerful and quite close to superuser status. Most of them affect all projects in your Weblate installation.
The following groups are created upon installation (or after executing :djadmin:`setupgroups`) and you are free to modify them. The migration will, however, re-create them if you delete or rename them.
- Guests
Defines permissions for non-authenticated users.
This group only contains anonymous users (see :setting:`ANONYMOUS_USER_NAME`).
You can remove roles from this group to limit permissions for non-authenticated users.
Default roles: Add suggestion, Access repository
- Viewers
This role ensures visibility of public projects for all users. By default, all users are members of this group.
By default, :ref:`automatic group assignment <autogroup>` makes all new accounts members of this group when they join.
Default roles: none
- Users
Default group for all users.
By default, :ref:`automatic group assignment <autogroup>` makes all new accounts members of this group when they join.
Default roles: Power user
- Reviewers
Group for reviewers (see :ref:`workflows`).
Default roles: Review strings
- Managers
Group for administrators.
Default roles: Administration
Warning
Never remove the predefined Weblate groups and users as this can lead to unexpected problems! If you have no use for them, you can removing all their privileges instead.
If you want to use your Weblate installation in a less public manner, i.e. allow
new users on an invitational basis only, it can be done by configuring Weblate
in such a way that only known users have an access to it. In order to do so, you can set
:setting:`REGISTRATION_OPEN` to False
to prevent registrations of any new
users, and set :setting:`REQUIRE_LOGIN` to /.*
to require logging-in to access
all the site pages. This is basically the way to lock your Weblate installation.
Hint
You can use built-in :ref:`invitations <manage-acl>` to add new users.