Profile preferences

A user’s profile preferences page allows the user to customize various aspects of GitLab to their liking.

To navigate to your profile’s preferences:

  1. In the upper-right corner, select your avatar.
  2. Select Preferences.

The GitLab navigation theme setting allows you to personalize your GitLab experience. You can choose from several color themes that add unique colors to the top navigation and left side navigation. Using individual color themes might help you differentiate between your different GitLab instances.

The default theme is Indigo. You can choose between 10 themes:

  • Indigo
  • Light Indigo
  • Blue
  • Light Blue
  • Green
  • Light Green
  • Red
  • Light Red
  • Dark
  • Light
  • Dark Mode

Dark mode

Introduced in GitLab 13.1 as an Experiment release.

GitLab has started work on dark mode! The dark mode Experiment release is available in the spirit of iteration and the lower expectations of Experiment features.

Progress on dark mode is tracked in the Dark theme epic. See the epic for:

  • A list of known issues.
  • Our planned direction and next steps.

If you find an issue that isn’t listed, leave a comment on the epic or create a new issue.

Dark mode is available as a navigation theme, for MVC and compatibility reasons. An issue exists to make it configurable in its own section along with support for different navigation themes.

Dark theme only works with the Dark syntax highlighting theme.

Syntax highlighting theme

Changing the default syntax highlighting theme for new users and users who are not signed in introduced in GitLab 15.10.

GitLab uses the Rouge Ruby library for syntax highlighting outside of any Editor context. The WebIDE (like Snippets) uses Monaco Editor and it’s provided Monarch library for syntax highlighting. For a list of supported languages, see the documentation of the respective libraries.

Changing this setting allows you to customize the color theme when viewing any syntax highlighted code on GitLab.

Profile preferences syntax highlighting themes

Introduced in GitLab 13.6, the themes Solarized and Monokai also apply to the Web IDE and Snippets.

You can use an API call to change the default syntax highlighting theme for new users and users who are not signed in. For more information, see the default_syntax_highlighting_theme in the list of settings that can be accessed through API calls.

Diff colors

A diff compares the old/removed content with the new/added content (for example, when reviewing a merge request or in a Markdown inline diff). Typically, the colors red and green are used for removed and added lines in diffs. The exact colors depend on the selected syntax highlighting theme. The colors may lead to difficulties in case of red-green color blindness.

For this reason, you can customize the following colors:

  • Color for removed lines
  • Color for added lines

Behavior

The following settings allow you to customize the behavior of the GitLab layout and default views of your dashboard and the projects’ landing pages.

Layout width

GitLab can be set up to use different widths depending on your liking. Choose between the fixed (max. 1280px) and the fluid (100%) application layout.

note
While 1280px is the standard max width when using fixed layout, some pages still use 100% width, depending on the content.

Homepage

This setting changes the behavior of the tanuki icon in the upper-left corner of GitLab.

Group overview content

The Group overview content dropdown list allows you to choose what information is displayed on a group’s home page.

You can choose between 2 options:

Project overview content

The Project overview content setting allows you to choose what content you want to see on a project’s home page.

Tab width

You can set the displayed width of tab characters across various parts of GitLab, for example, blobs, diffs, and snippets.

note
Some parts of GitLab do not respect this setting, including the WebIDE, file editor and Markdown editor.

Localization

Language

Select your preferred language from a list of supported languages.

This feature is experimental and translations are not complete yet.

First day of the week

The first day of the week can be customized for calendar views and date pickers.

You can choose one of the following options as the first day of the week:

  • Saturday
  • Sunday
  • Monday

If you select System Default, the instance default setting is used.

Time preferences

Use relative times

Introduced in GitLab 14.1.

You can select your preferred time format for the GitLab user interface:

  • Relative times, for example, 30 minutes ago.
  • Absolute times, for example, May 18, 2021, 3:57 PM.

The times are formatted depending on your chosen language and browser locale.

To set your time preference:

  1. On the Preferences page, go to Time preferences.
  2. Select the Use relative times checkbox to use relative times, or clear the checkbox to use absolute times.
  3. Select Save changes.
note
This feature is experimental, and choosing absolute times might break certain layouts. Open an issue if you notice that using absolute times breaks a layout.

Integrations

Configure your preferences with third-party services which provide enhancements to your GitLab experience.

Sourcegraph

note
This setting is only visible if Sourcegraph has been enabled by a GitLab administrator.

Manage the availability of integrated code intelligence features powered by Sourcegraph. View the Sourcegraph feature documentation for more information.

Gitpod

Enable and disable the GitLab-Gitpod integration. This is only visible after the integration is configured by a GitLab administrator. View the Gitpod feature documentation for more information.