Hi there! Late last night some users reached out to me about this thread, worried about the state of their private projects. I want to first make it very clear that we will not be making private projects public. And if there were ever a reason we would do that, we would give ample notice. I apologize to everyone who saw this and was afraid of that - it’s a scary idea and we do not want to put anyone in that position!
What is happening with regards to private projects is still in the works, among some other really cool things the team is working on, and sometimes we hide some unfinished features and policies behind “feature flags” for testing. Some users found a way to toggle them, which exposed one of those unfinished features. That’s on us for making that toggle public, it’s not something that any of you are in trouble for.
What I told some users last night was that clearly we are working on improved access controls for your projects. Right now the experience can be confusing, as the private toggle only applies to code. Y’all have been asking for fully private apps for awhile and so we have been exploring how we can offer that and make sharing apps as easy as sharing a Google Doc!
I hope this clears up some of the confusion. If you have any questions, please reach out - my email is jenn@glitch.com!
While you’re here, we also want to know your feedback on our current offering of private projects - why do you use them, and what would you like to see from Glitch in the future around privacy and app sharing? What else should we know and consider about this feature?
Private projects are neat for a lot of reasons, they allow you to hide unreleased code, they allow you to hide unfinished code, and some folks don’t want their code to be re mixable (as that can cause clones)
Will it still be possible to create fully private projects in the future without a Glitch premium subscription, when this feature is rolled out?
It’s also nice to see that Glitch is still thinking about creating new features! Glitch is an amazing tool used by very many people around the world! You guys have done a lot of amazing work for other developers, and I’m grateful!
So, editing the settings, it actually changes the text from boost to premium. As far as I know, the settings menu is sort of a “Beta” feature. Basically, you can access more and less from Glitch. I have decided to not show as much as possible due to the fact that more posts like the ones I made may show up. So, I guess that Glitch Boost may become Glitch Premium.
Warning
These features are experimental and should ONLY be used if YOU know what you are doing.
Will non-members be able to make private-code projects going forward?
Sample exploits for vulnerabilities that I’ve submitted to the Glitch team. These are secret so that attackers can’t copy it before the vulnerabilities are fixed.
Workspaces for open source projects. I feel like if I made these public instead, there would be more noisy out-of-date mirrors of things that are already public.
Workspaces for my own open-source projects. In these, the decision to publish changes is something I do once in a while, and not continuously while coding. This whole thread is an example of what happens when users find out about features in development with no context.
Collaborative projects where we haven’t agreed to release code.
Non-free software. Some of my projects contain files that aren’t free-as-in-speech, and I’ve agreed not to share them with the public.
Reference solutions to technical interview questions. We’re trying to have questions that don’t have solutions publicly available.
Non-public personal projects. Either these are intended to have a (usually minimal) public web interface or they have an authenticated web interface or I disable the start command in package.json.
which was not to say that it’s incorrect for private-code to be controlled as a premium-only feature. The statement says they intend to add more control to that premium-only feature, including the ability to put access controls on the live app.
Question about this: by “fully” private apps, is the project accessible only by the project owner and members, or is it private in the sense that it’s password protected or anything similar of that sort, such that anyone might be able to access the live app of the project with the password?
Here’s the thing, when I hovered over the remix button it said “You can’t remix private projects.” This is possibly due to that feature. Or a security feature with that options.
We haven’t finalized what parts if any are going to be a paid feature.
This is is how private code projects currently work, so that’s likely the case, but I can’t confirm for sure as it’s a feature that is still in-flight and subject to changes!
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I’m sorry I can’t provide any more specific information, as of course it’s a feature we’re still working through, but we do appreciate your feedback and would love to continue hearing what you’d like to see us build around app access/sharing!
