About collaboration in a personal repository
You can collaborate with others on repositories you own by inviting them as collaborators. Collaborators have access to contribute to your code and manage issues and pull requests.
To add a collaborator, see Inviting collaborators to a personal repository.
Private forks inherit the permissions structure of the upstream repository. This helps owners of private repositories maintain control over their code. For example, if the upstream repository is private and gives read/write access to a team, then the same team will have read/write access to any forks of the private upstream repository. Only team permissions (not individual permissions) are inherited by private forks.
Note
When you change base permissions for an organization, permissions for private forks are not automatically updated. For more information, see Setting base permissions for an organization.
About successors
We recommend inviting another GitHub user to be your successor, to manage your user owned repositories if you cannot. As a successor, they will have permission to:
- Archive your public repositories.
- Transfer your public repositories to their own user owned account.
- Transfer your public repositories to an organization where they can create repositories.
Successors cannot log into your account.
An appointed successor can manage your public repositories after presenting a death certificate then waiting for 7 days or presenting an obituary then waiting for 21 days. For more information, see GitHub Deceased User Policy.
To request access to manage repositories as a successor, please contact us through the GitHub Support portal.
For more information, see Maintaining ownership continuity of your personal account's repositories.