When an OAuth App wants to identify you by your GitHub account, you'll see a page with the app's developer contact information and a list of the specific data that's being requested.
Tip: You must verify your email address before you can authorize an OAuth App.
OAuth App access
OAuth Apps can have read or write access to your GitHub data.
- Read access only allows an app to look at your data.
- Write access allows an app to change your data.
Tip: We recommend that you regularly review your authorized integrations. Remove any applications and tokens that haven't been used in a while. For more information, see "Reviewing your authorized integrations."
About OAuth scopes
Scopes are named groups of permissions that an OAuth App can request to access both public and non-public data.
When you want to use an OAuth App that integrates with GitHub, that app lets you know what type of access to your data will be required. If you grant access to the app, then the app will be able to perform actions on your behalf, such as reading or modifying data. For example, if you want to use an app that requests user:email scope, the app will have read-only access to your private email addresses. For more information, see "About scopes for OAuth Apps."
Note: Currently, you can't scope source code access to read-only.
There is a limit of ten tokens that are issued per user/application/scope combination. If the application requests enough tokens to go over one of the limits, older tokens with the same scope being requested will stop working.
Types of requested data
OAuth Apps can request several types of data.
| Type of data | Description |
|---|---|
| Commit status | You can grant access for an app to report your commit status. Commit status access allows apps to determine if a build is a successful against a specific commit. Apps won't have access to your code, but they can read and write status information against a specific commit. |
| Deployments | Deployment status access allows apps to determine if a deployment is successful against a specific commit for public and private repositories. Apps won't have access to your code. |
| Gists | Gist access allows apps to read or write to both your public and secret Gists. |
| Hooks | Webhooks access allows apps to read or write hook configurations on repositories you manage. |
| Notifications | Notification access allows apps to read your GitHub notifications, such as comments on issues and pull requests. However, apps remain unable to access anything in your repositories. |
| Organizations and teams | Organization and teams access allows apps to access and manage organization and team membership. |
| Personal user data | User data includes information found in your user profile, like your name, e-mail address, and location. |
| Repositories | Repository information includes the names of contributors, the branches you've created, and the actual files within your repository. Apps can request access for either public or private repositories on a user-wide level. |
| Repository delete | Apps can request to delete repositories that you administer, but they won't have access to your code. |
Requesting updated permissions
When OAuth Apps request new access permissions, they will notify you of the differences between their current permissions and the new permissions.
OAuth Apps and organizations
When you authorize an OAuth App for your personal user account, you'll also see how the authorization will affect each organization you're a member of.
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For organizations with OAuth App access restrictions, you can request that organization admins approve the application for use in that organization. If the organization does not approve the application, then the application will only be able to access the organization's public resources. If you're an organization admin, you can approve the application yourself.
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For organizations without OAuth App access restrictions, the application will automatically be authorized for access to that organization's resources. For this reason, you should be careful about which OAuth Apps you approve for access to your personal account resources as well as any organization resources.
If you belong to any organizations that enforce SAML single sign-on, you must have an active SAML session for each organization each time you authorize an OAuth App.