Access control¶

Changed in version 3.0: Before Weblate 3.0, the privilege system was based on Django, but is now specifically built for Weblate. If you are using an older version, please consult the documentation for that version, the information here will not apply.

Weblate comes with a fine grained privilege system to assign user permissions for the whole instance, or in a limited scope.

The permission system based on groups and roles, where roles define a set of permissions, and groups assign them to users and translations, see Users, roles, groups and permissions for more details.

After installation a default set of groups is created, and you can use those to assign users roles for the whole instance (see Default groups and roles). Additionally when Project access control is turned on, you can assign users to specific translation projects. More fine-grained configuration can be achieved using Custom access control.

Common setups¶

Locking down Weblate¶

To completely lock down your Weblate installation, you can use REQUIRE_LOGIN to force users to sign in and REGISTRATION_OPEN to prevent new registrations.

Site wide permissions¶

To manage permissions for a whole instance, just add users to Users (this is done by default using the Automatic group assignments), Reviewers and Managers groups. Keep all projects configured as Public (see Project access control).

Per project permissions¶

Note

This feature is not available for projects running the Hosted Libre plan.

Set your projects to Protected or Private, and manage users per project in the Weblate interface.

Adding permissions to languages, components or projects¶

Note

This feature is not available for projects running the Hosted Libre plan.

You can additionally grant permissions to any user based on project, component or language set. To achieve this, create a new group (e.g. Czech translators) and configure it for a given resource. Any assigned permissions will be granted to members of that group for selected resources.

This will work just fine without additional setup, if using per project permissions. For permissions on the whole instance, you will probably also want to remove these permissions from the Users group, or change automatic assignment of all users to that group (see Automatic group assignments).

Project access control¶

Note

By enabling ACL, all users are prohibited from accessing anything within a given project, unless you add the permissions for them to do just that.

Note

This feature is not available for projects running the Hosted Libre plan.

You can limit user’s access to individual projects. This feature is turned on by Access control in the configuration of each respective project. This automatically creates several groups for this project, see Predefined groups.

The following choices exist for Access control:

Public: Publicly visible and translatable
Protected: Publicly visible, but translatable only for selected users
Private: Visible and translatable only for selected users
Custom: Weblate does not manage users, see Custom access control.

To allow access to this project, you have to add the privilege either directly to the given user, or group of users in the Django admin interface, or by using user management on the project page, as described in Managing per project access control.

Note

Even with ACL turned on, some summary info will be available about your project:

Statistics for the whole instance, including counts for all projects.
Language summary for the whole instance, including counts for all projects.

Automatic group assignments¶

You can set up Weblate to automatically add users to groups based on their e-mail addresses. This automatic assignment happens only at the time of account creation.

This can be set up in the Django admin interface for each group (in the Authentication section).

Note

The automatic group assignment for the Users and Viewers groups will always be created by Weblate upon migrations, in case you want to turn it off, simply set the regular expression to ^$, which will never match.

Users, roles, groups and permissions¶

The authentication models consist of several objects:

Permission: Individual permissions defined by Weblate. You can not assign individual permissions, this can only be done through assignment of roles.
Role: Role defines a set of permissions. This allows reuse of these sets in several places, and makes the administration easier.
User: Users can be members of several groups.
Group: Groups connect roles, users and authentication objects (projects, languages and component lists).

Permission checking¶

Whenever a permission is checked to decide whether one is able to perform a given action, the check is carried out according to scope, and the following checks are performed in the order:

Group Component list is matched against accessed component or project (for project level access).
Group Components are matched against accessed component or project (for project level access).
Group Projects are matched against accessed project.

As you can see, granting access to a component automatically grants user access to a containing project as well.

Note

Only the first rule will be used. So if you set all of Component list, Components and Project, only Component list will be applied.

An additional step is performed if checking permission for the translation:

Group Languages are matched against accessed translations, it it ignored for component or project level access.

Hint

You can use Language selection or Project selection to automate inclusion of all languages or projects.

Checking access to a project¶

A user has to be a member of a group linked to the project or any component inside it. Only membership is enough, no specific permissions are needed to access a project (this is used in the default Viewers group, see Default groups and roles).

Checking access to a component¶

A user can access the unrestricted component once he can access the containing project. With enabled Restricted access the access to the component requires explicit permission to the component (or containing component list).

Managing users and groups¶

All users and groups can be managed using the Django admin interface, available under /admin/ URL.

Managing per project access control¶

Note

This feature only works for ACL controlled projects, see Project access control.

Users with the Manage project access privilege (see Access control) can also manage users in projects with access control turned on through the project page. The interface allows you to:

Add existing users to the project
Invite new users to the project
Change permissions of the users
Revoke access to the users

New in version 3.11.

Resend user email invitations, invalidating any previously sent invitation

The user management is available in the Manage menu of a project:

Predefined groups¶

Weblate comes with a predefined set of groups for a project, wherefrom you can assign users.

Administration: Has all permissions available in the project.

Glossary: Can manage glossary (add or remove entries, or upload).

Languages: Can manage translated languages (add or remove translations).

Screenshots: Can manage screenshots (add or remove them, and associate them to source strings).

Sources: Can edit source strings in Monolingual components and source string info.

Translate: Can translate the project, and upload translations made offline.

VCS: Can manage VCS and access the exported repository.

Review: Can approve translations during review.

Billing: Can access billing info (see Billing).

Custom access control¶

By choosing Custom as Access control, Weblate will stop managing access for a given project, and all users and groups can be managed using the Django admin interface. This can be used to define more complex access control, or set up a shared access policy for all projects in a single Weblate instance. If you want to turn this on for all projects by default, please configure the DEFAULT_ACCESS_CONTROL.

Warning

By turning this on, Weblate will remove all Project access control it has created for this project. If you are doing this without admin permission from the instance, you will instantly lose your access to manage the project.

Default groups and roles¶

These roles and groups are created upon installation. The built-in roles are always kept up to date by the database migration on upgrade and any custom changes will be lost. In case you want to define own set of permissions, please define a new role for that.

List of privileges¶

Billing (see Billing)

View billing info [Administration, Billing]

Changes

Download changes [Administration]

Comments

Post comment [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]

Delete comment [Administration]

Component

Edit component settings [Administration]

Lock component, preventing it from being translated [Administration]

Glossary

Add glossary entry [Administration, Manage glossary, Power user]

Edit glossary entry [Administration, Manage glossary, Power user]

Delete glossary entry [Administration, Manage glossary, Power user]

Upload glossary entries [Administration, Manage glossary, Power user]

Automatic suggestions

Use automatic suggestions [Administration, Power user]

Projects

Edit project settings [Administration]

Manage project access [Administration]

Reports

Download reports [Administration]

Screenshots

Add screenshot [Administration, Manage screenshots]

Edit screenshot [Administration, Manage screenshots]

Delete screenshot [Administration, Manage screenshots]

Source strings

Edit source string info [Administration, Edit source]

Strings

Add new strings [Administration]

Ignore failing checks [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]

Edit strings [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]

Review strings [Administration, Review strings]

Edit string when suggestions are enforced [Administration, Review strings]

Edit source strings [Administration, Edit source, Power user]

Suggestions

Accept suggestions [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]

Add suggestions [Add suggestion, Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]

Delete suggestions [Administration]

Vote on suggestions [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]

Translations

Start new translation [Administration, Manage languages, Power user]

Perform automatic translation [Administration, Manage languages]

Delete existing translations [Administration, Manage languages]

Start translation into a new language [Administration, Manage languages]

Uploads

Define author of translation upload [Administration]

Overwrite existing strings with an upload [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]

Upload translation strings [Administration, Edit source, Power user, Review strings, Translate]

VCS

Access the internal repository [Access repository, Administration, Manage repository, Power user]

Commit changes to the internal repository [Administration, Manage repository]

Push change from the internal repository [Administration, Manage repository]

Reset changes in the internal repository [Administration, Manage repository]

View upstream repository location [Access repository, Administration, Manage repository, Power user]

Update the internal repository [Administration, Manage repository]

Site wide privileges

Use management interface

Add new projects

Add language definitions

Manage language definitions

Manage groups

Manage users

Manage roles

Manage announcements

Manage translation memory

Manage component lists

Note

The site wide privileges are not granted to any default role. These are powerful and quite close to the superuser status—most of them affect all the projects of your Weblate installation.

List of groups¶

The following groups are created upon installation (or after executing setupgroups) and you are free to modify them. The migration will however re-create them if you delete or rename them.

Guests

Defines permissions for non authenticated users.

This group contains only anonymous users (see ANONYMOUS_USER_NAME).

You can remove roles from this group to limit permissions for non authenticated users.

Default roles: Add suggestion, Access repository

Viewers

This role ensures visibility of public projects for all users. By default all users are members of this group.

By default all users are members of this group, using Automatic group assignments.

Default roles: none

Users

Default group for all users.

By default all users are members of this group using Automatic group assignments.

Default roles: Power user

Reviewers

Group for reviewers (see Translation workflows).

Default roles: Review strings

Managers

Group for administrators.

Default roles: Administration

Warning

Never remove the predefined Weblate groups and users, as this can lead to unexpected problems. If you do not want to use these features, just remove all privileges from them.