Sharing options

Learn about the different options for sharing your GitBook space.

Sharing a space

To share a space, start by clicking the share button, which you'll find near the top-right corner of each space. This will open the share modal.

To share a space, start by clicking the share button. This will open the share modal.

Inside the share modal, you'll see tabs on the left-hand side to choose from.

The range of tabs available to you will depend on your permissions in the space.

What sharing options are available?

Invite members

By default, users within your organization will inherit the permissions assigned to them within the organization settings area.

If you want your content to remain private, and shared only with a specific person or group, inviting that person or people to be a member of your organization could be a great choice. They will be able to access the content when they are logged into their GitBook account.

Invite members (visible only to organization administrators)

Inviting a member will make them a member of the organization that owns the space, which will increase your overall subscription charge.

The cost for this will depend on the plan that the organization is subscribed to.

It is also possible to invite members to the organization from within the organization settings area.

Publish to the web

Preview of a share modal opened on the public sharing option

If your content is suited for a much wider audience, you can publish it on the web. Spaces that are published on the web can be indexed by search engines and will be available to anyone on the Internet.

You'll still retain control over who can edit your content, and only your primary content branch will be published, so any change requests will remain private until merged.

Share to an audience

Preview of the share modal opened on the share to an audience option

In some cases, you might want to publish your content, but only permit certain people to access it. We offer a number of options for this:

Publish in collection

This option will only be visible if your collection has been published first.

If the space is nested inside of a published collection, you'll see this option. A space nested inside of a collection does not have to be published as part of the collection so you can do things like work on a new version and only publish it when it's ready. Toggle this option to publish the space as part of the collection. You can find out more about collection publishing.

Publish with visitor authentication

With visitor authentication, GitBook lets your server-side code handle who has access to the content. Find out more about visitor authentication.

Publish with share links

Share links include a private token, making it extremely difficult for anyone outside of those you share the link with to find the content. This can be a great way to share private content with those who are not members of your organization. Find out more about share links.

Publish as unlisted

Unlisted spaces are publicly available, but they won't be indexed by search engines such as Google. They will still be accessible to anyone on the Internet who knows (or can guess) the link to your documentation. Unlisted spaces can be particularly helpful if you want to publish a beta of your docs, or do large-scale user testing, without impacting your SEO with potentially duplicate content, etc.

Export as PDF

This option allows you to generate a PDF copy of your content and share this with others in any way you choose. You can export one or more single pages or the entire space in one PDF file. Find out more about PDF export.

Who can access?

This tab confirms the current visibility of the space, along with who has access to it within the GitBook app. No settings can be changed here; all changes are made from within the other tabs.