discussions

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The Comment Box Becomes More Consistent and Accessible

We are excited to announce a significant update to the comment box used in GitHub issues, discussions, and pull requests, aiming to refine and enhance how you interact and collaborate. This release is a testament to our ongoing efforts to provide an exceptional user experience, making GitHub more intuitive, consistent, and accessible across the platform.

A screenshot of the new comment box

The updated comment box is designed to integrate seamlessly with the existing GitHub environment, ensuring a familiar yet improved experience for all users. Highlights and improvements include:

  • Enhanced User Experience: The newly revamped comment box brings an elevated experience to a wider range of users across various devices. With this update, we've enhanced the responsiveness and streamlined the markup to better accommodate keyboard and screen reader users. This ensures a uniform and smooth user experience across issues, discussions, and pull requests, promoting seamless communication and collaboration.
  • Consistency and Familiarity: Our design philosophy for the new comment box was clear: keep it familiar, make it better. We’ve developed the updated version to closely resemble the original while enhancing it with improved accessibility, consistency, and ease of use across various screen sizes. The transition for you will be smooth, with no disruptions to your workflow.
  • Commitment to Accessibility: This update contributes to our continuous journey to make GitHub more accessible to everyone. The comment box now aligns more closely with our accessibility commitment, enhancing the experience in features such as issues, pull requests, and discussions. Check out our Accessibility Commitment to learn more about how we are making GitHub more inclusive.

We are excited for you to experience the new comment box and we welcome feedback to continue improving GitHub for everyone.

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More secure private attachments

Previously, all attached (drag-and-dropped) images and videos on GitHub Issues, Pull Requests, Discussions, and wikis were available to view without authentication if you knew their direct URL. Now, future attachments associated with private repositories can only be viewed after logging in. This doesn’t apply retroactively to existing attachments, which are obfuscated by having a long, unguessable URL.

Email notifications sent from private repositories will no longer display images; each image is replaced by a link to view it on the web. Content inside a Git repository is not affected by this change and has always required authentication for private repositories.

Learn more about attaching files.

Questions or suggestions? Join the conversation in the community discussion.

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Organize Discussions Categories into Sections

Since the introduction of Category Sections to organize content in our own community, users have asked for similar features to organize their own Discussions. Today, we're introducing the ability for all maintainers to group their Discussion categories into sections. We think this will help users better organize content, and also find new content more easily.
Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 8 28 12 AM

The UI for this feature looks similar to the one in our own community, but users will now see a new UI when they edit a category. Users can not only create a new Category, but they can also create a new section from the "Manage Discussion Categories" page.
Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 8 30 22 AM

Editing a single category now also gives the user the option of adding it to an existing section.
Screenshot 2023-04-17 at 8 31 41 AM

For questions or feedback, please visit our community.

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Introducing the GitHub Markdown Helpers Public Beta

GitHub users write a lot of Markdown; so much so that we render 2 billion Markdown files everyday; at peak times, we're processing 1,300 Markdown files a second! Any opportunity we have to shave a few seconds off of the Markdown authoring experience on GitHub is time well-spent.

Introducing Markdown Helpers powered by Slash Commands

To use Markdown Helpers, simply type / on Issues, Pull Requests, or Discussion descriptions/comments and use the subsequent dialog to choose from a number of useful Markdown shortcuts.

Use shortcuts like /table to make Markdown tables a breeze, or /details to make selectively showing content to readers much easier than remembering the HTML formatting.

As part of our first release, we've included 6 out-of-the-box features which we hope will help teams author Markdown faster and with less context switching:

  • Code Block
    • Support for language-specific syntax highlighting
  • Details
    • Specify details that the reader can open and close on demand
  • Saved Replies
  • Table
    • Easily insert Markdown Tables
  • Templates
    • Easily populate your Repository's Issue or Pull Request templates directly from Slash Commands!
  • Tasklist
    • Easily insert a Tasklist
    • Note: Tasklists are currently in Private Beta, only users in organizations added to the Private Beta will see this option)

We'd love to hear from you!

Be sure to check out the official Slash Commands documentation for more details on the commands we're releasing today.

Anything we missed? Got an idea for a great Slash Commands feature?

Please leave us some feedback in our Feedback Discussion about how you'd like to use Slash Commands on GitHub.

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Adding the ability to close GitHub Discussions

GitHub Discussions now supports the ability to close a Discussion. Discussions can be closed for one of three reasons: Resolved, Outdated, or Duplicate. Closing a Discussion is much like closing an Issue or a Pull Request. Users can select a reason for closing in the dropdown. A screenshot of the dropdown is shown below:

Dropdown showing Close Discussion options

The reason for closing is visible to users in two places on the page.

First, in the icon at the top of the Discussion:

Icon at the top of Discussions showing that it is closed

Second, on the events timeline:

The event timeline showing a Discussion being closed

Besides the state of the Discussion being visible on the page, we're also now surfacing the state of a Discussion in search. We're adding three new filters:

is:<closed/opened>
filters out open/closed discussions

reason:<resolved/outdated/duplicate>
returns closed discussions that were closed with the provided reason

closed:<date>
returns discussions closed on a certain date. Supports < and > operators to get discussions closed before or after the date.

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Introducing the ability to subscribe to specific Discussion categories on Slack

Many users use our Slack integration to know what’s new in their repo’s Discussion. However, for large repos, these notifications can get overwhelming. Today, we’re introducing the ability to subscribe to specific Discussion categories in Slack. By default, when users subscribe to a Discussion, they subscribe to all categories. With the new command, we’re introducing a way to add category filters:

/github subscribe <org_name>/<repo_name> discussions:{category:"<category1>","<category2>"}

Users can also unsubscribe a Slack channel from previously set category filters with a similar command:

/github unsubscribe <org_name>/<repo_name> discussions:{category:"<category1>"}

Note: By default, if no category filters were added, the app will subscribe to all categories in the Discussion. Similarly, if you remove all category filters, the app will return to its default state of being subscribed to all categories. To unsubscribe from Discussions entirely, users can continue to use the unsubscribe command on Discussions, as shown below:

/github unsubscribe <org_name>/<repo_name> discussions

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Sunset Notice – Team Discussions

Today we are announcing the deprecation of Team Discussions, which will have individual sunset timelines for GitHub.com, API, and GHES users. Please see below for full details.

Last year, we introduced Organization Discussions, a way for teams to scope their discussions to the organization-level rather than the repository-level. Today, Organization Discussions has grown to include a number of features – including Categories, Category forms, Threaded comments, Q&A features (marking a comment as an answer), Polls, and Labels.

As we continue to invest and enhance Organization Discussions, we will be sunsetting Team Discussions. To migrate your existing Team Discussions to Organization Discussions, maintainers can click on the banner at the top of their Team Discussions page:

Screenshot 2023-02-07 at 3 32 28 PM

Following deprecation, access to any unmigrated Team Discussions will be available as raw text, but there won't be any ability to add, modify, or delete Team Discussions.

The deprecation will follow these timelines:

GitHub.com Timeline:

  • Feb 8, 2023: A banner to migrate will be visible to maintainers at the top of their Team Discussions page, with the migration tooling included.
  • May 8, 2023: Team Discussions will be deprecated.
  • After May 8, 2023: Access to unmigrated Team Discussions will be available as raw text, but the UI won’t be available to add, modify, or delete Team Discussions.

GHES Timeline:

  • August 8, 2023: Team Discussions will be marked for deprecation in version 3.10. A banner to migrate will be visible to maintainers at the top of their Team Discussions page, with the migration tooling included.
  • February 27, 2024: Team Discussions will be removed in version 3.12.
  • After February 27, 2024: Access to unmigrated Team Discussions will be available as raw text, but the UI won’t be available to add, modify, or delete Team Discussions.

API Timeline:

  • The Team Discussions API will be deprecated in the next calendar version (no sooner than April 30th, 2023)

For questions or feedback, please visit our community.

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Enterprises and organizations can display critical announcements

GitHub Enterprise Cloud admins can now display critical announcements to members of their enterprise or specific organizations. GitHub Enterprise Server already has this capability.

With this enhancement, Enterprise Cloud admins can display a critical message on all pages of their enterprise or in specific organizations. For example, you could announce a release cutoff date or an upcoming permission change. Announcements are displayed at the tops of pages as shown here:

An image showing how an announcement message appears on GitHub

To publish an announcement, you must be an enterprise owner or organization owner. Open your enterprise or organization settings and select Announcement. Enter your announcement message, an optional expiration when the announcement should be automatically unpublished, and select whether to allow users to dismiss the announcement when they see it. Click Publish announcement to publish it.

An image showing configuration of an announcement

For the best user experience, we recommend publishing only critical announcements and keeping the message brief to occupy less display space on each page. Link the message to a discussion for more context, guidance, and optional conversation. For non-critical messages or extended announcements, use a discussion instead.

For more details, see Customizing user messages for your enterprise in the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.

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Discussions category specific pins and enhancements

Previously, repository admins could pin up to four important discussions above the list of discussions for the repository or organization. Now, they can also pin discussions to a specific discussion category to provide context relevant to that category. These pins appear above the list of discussions in that category and are not affected by pagination or search.

category specific pins

More enhancements to Discussions available today:

To learn more about GitHub Discussions, read the overview or documentation, and start conversations with your community today.

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Translations for Discussions

Translations are now available for discussion comments in Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and English. If your first preference browser language is different from the language of the discussion comment, you will now see an option to translate the comment’s contents.

Discussion comment in Spanish being translated to English and back again

This feature is in beta and we’d love your feedback. Leave us a note here and let us know what you think.

Traduções para Discussões

As traduções estão agora disponíveis para comentários de discussão em espanhol, português, coreano e inglês. Se seu primeiro idioma de navegação preferido for diferente do idioma do comentário da discussão, você verá agora uma opção para traduzir o conteúdo do comentário.

Esta funcionalidade está em versão beta e adoraríamos seu feedback. Escreva um comentário para a gente aqui e diga o que você acha.

Traducciones para Discusiones

Las traducciones ahora están disponibles para comentarios de discusión en español, portugués, coreano e inglés. Si el idioma de tu navegador predeterminado es diferente al del idioma del comentario de discusión, ahora verás una opción para traducir el contenido del comentario.

Esta funcionalidad está en versión beta y nos encantaría recibir tu opinión. Déjanos una nota aquí y cuéntanos lo que piensas.

디스커션 번역 기능

깃허브 디스커션 코멘트/댓글에서 이제 한국어, 스패인어, 포르투갈어, 그리고 영어로 번역 가능한 기능이 더해졌습니다. 웹브라우져에서 디폴트로 설정 되어 있는 언어가 깃허브 디스커션 코멘트/댓글 언어와 다르다면 내용을 자동 번역 할수 있는 링크 옵션을 선택하실수 있습니다.

현재 이 기능은 베타 버전이며 여러분의 소중한 의견이 필요합니다. 여기 링크 를 통해서 피드백을 남겨 주시면 깃허브 디스커션 번역 기능을 개선 시키는데 많은 도움이 될것 입니다. 감사합니다.

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Organization Discussions

You can now enable Discussions for your organization, which is a place for your organization to share announcements and host conversations that aren't specific to a single repository within
your organization. To get started, go to Organization Settings -> Discussions -> Enable discussions for this organization.

enable org discussions

For more information, see GitHub Discussions documentation.

For questions or feedback, visit GitHub Discussions feedback.

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