Moderate users

If you are assigned the Owner role for a group, you can approve, ban, or automatically remove dormant members.

[!note] This topic is specifically related to user moderation in groups. For information related to GitLab Self-Managed, see the administration documentation.

Ban and unban users

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• Tier: Ultimate
• Offering: GitLab.com

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• Introduced in GitLab 15.8 with a flag named limit_unique_project_downloads_per_namespace_user. Disabled by default.
• Enabled on GitLab.com in GitLab 15.6.
• Generally available in GitLab 18.0. Feature flag limit_unique_project_downloads_per_namespace_user removed.

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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.

Ban a user

<i class="fa-youtube-play" aria-hidden="true"></i> 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. In the left sidebar, select Manage > Members.
3. Next to the member you want to ban, select the vertical ellipsis ({{< icon name="ellipsis_v" >}}).
4. From the dropdown list, select Ban member.

Unban a user

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

<i class="fa-youtube-play" aria-hidden="true"></i> 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. In the left sidebar, select Manage > Members.
3. Select the Banned tab.
4. For the account you want to unban, select Unban.

Automatically remove dormant members

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• Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
• Offering: GitLab.com
• Status: Beta

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• Introduced in GitLab 17.1 with a flag named group_remove_dormant_members. Disabled by default.
• Released as a beta feature in GitLab 17.9.

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Prerequisites:

• You must have the Owner role for the group.

You can automatically remove group members who have no activity in the group for a specified period of time (default and minimum is 90 days). The following actions count as activity:

• Interacting with projects through Git HTTP/SSH events, such as clone and push.
• Visiting pages in GitLab, such as dashboards, projects, issues, merge requests, or settings.
• Using the REST or GraphQL API in the scope of the group.

[!note] Activity has not been recorded for members added before 2025-01-22. These members will not be removed until 2025-04-22, even if they have been dormant for over 90 days.

• Dormant group owners are neither deactivated nor removed from the group.
• Dormant enterprise users are not removed, but deactivated. When these users sign back in, their accounts are reactivated and their access is restored.

To turn on automatic dormant member removal:

1. In the top bar, select Search or go to and find your group.
2. In 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, the maximum is 1827 days (5 years).
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.