# Private projects

> Keeping a project and its tasks to yourself or a small group, instead of showing them to everyone in the workspace.

By default a project is visible to everyone in your workspace. That is usually what you want: work is easier to pick up when people can see it without being invited to it.

Sometimes it isn't. A performance review, a reorg, an acquisition, your own half-formed ideas — these need a smaller room. Making a project private gives it one.

## What private actually means

A private project is invisible to everyone who is not on it. Not greyed out, not hidden behind a warning — absent. It does not appear in their sidebar, their search results, or any list of the workspace's projects, and neither do its tasks.

That covers everything attached to those tasks too: comments, checklist items, attachments, and labels. If you can't see the task, you can't see anything hanging off it.

Two groups of people can see a private project:

- **Its members** — anyone added to the project directly.
- **Members of any team it belongs to** — if you add a team to a private project, everyone on that team can see it, without being added individually.

Everyone else in the workspace cannot, including workspace owners and admins. Being an admin lets you manage the workspace; it does not let you read a project you were not invited to.

## Making a project private

Open the project's settings and change **Visibility** to _Private to members_. You can also choose it when you create a project, which avoids a window where the project exists and everyone can see it.

Changing visibility takes effect immediately. When you make a project private, it disappears from the devices of everyone who is no longer allowed to see it — including copies already downloaded to their phone or laptop.

## Adding and removing people

The project's **Members** page lists who is on it, and lets you add anyone in the workspace or remove someone.

On a private project, this list is the access. Adding someone lets them see the project and its tasks; removing someone takes that away, and the project disappears from their devices. On a workspace-visible project the same list only decides whose sidebar the project sits in — everyone can see it either way.

## Making a private project visible again

Change **Visibility** back to _Visible to workspace_. The project and its tasks reappear for everyone.

Anything written while the project was private is now visible too. There is no separate archive of "things said in private" — the project simply becomes readable, comments and all. Worth a thought before you flip it back.

## What private projects are not

Private projects control who can _see_ work. They are not encryption, and they are not a legal boundary. Someone with access to your workspace's billing or an export can still reach data through those routes, and Done Bear staff can access data as described in our privacy policy.

If you need something genuinely secret from your own organisation, a task manager is the wrong tool.