announcements

Subscribe to all “announcements” posts via RSS or follow GitHub Changelog on Twitter to stay updated on everything we ship.

→ ~ cd github-changelog
→ ~/github-changelog|main git log main
showing all changes successfully

New Terminology for GitHub Previews

As part of our commitment to improving your experience at GitHub, we’re simplifying the terminology we use to refer to products that are in testing and validation stages. Starting on October 18, 2024, you’ll start seeing the word “Preview” instead of “Alpha” or “Beta” to describe our features that are not yet generally available.

What’s Changing?

Our goal with this update is to create a more consistent, clear process that helps our customers understand the state of new features and how they fit into their development workflows.

  • As shown in the table below, we’re reducing the number of terms we’re using but keeping the same flexibility for giving early access and gathering customer feedback before a General Availability (GA) launch.
  • The key difference between “Private” and “Public” previews is whether the release is publicly announced.

What to Expect

These changes are now live in customer-facing documentation as of today.

Here’s an overview of the changes:

Previous Terminology New Terminology Details
Alpha Private Preview
  • Not publicly announced
  • Limited number of customers
Private Beta
Technical Preview Technical Preview
  • Used for experiments and research projects primarily from GitHub Next
  • Limited number of customers
Limited Public Beta Public Preview
  • Publicly announced on the GitHub Changelog and includes GitHub Docs
  • May be open to all, or limited to selected customers behind a waitlist
Public Beta
General Availability General Availability
Deprecation Closing Down
  • Signals that a product or service is being phased out
Sunset Retired
  • Marks the official end of a product or feature’s life
  • No longer available, supported, or maintained

Thanks for being part of the GitHub community! These updates are designed to provide clearer communication and a smoother experience as we roll out new features.

See more

Enterprises and organizations can display critical announcements

GitHub Enterprise Cloud admins can now display critical announcements to members of their enterprise or specific organizations. GitHub Enterprise Server already has this capability.

With this enhancement, Enterprise Cloud admins can display a critical message on all pages of their enterprise or in specific organizations. For example, you could announce a release cutoff date or an upcoming permission change. Announcements are displayed at the tops of pages as shown here:

An image showing how an announcement message appears on GitHub

To publish an announcement, you must be an enterprise owner or organization owner. Open your enterprise or organization settings and select Announcement. Enter your announcement message, an optional expiration when the announcement should be automatically unpublished, and select whether to allow users to dismiss the announcement when they see it. Click Publish announcement to publish it.

An image showing configuration of an announcement

For the best user experience, we recommend publishing only critical announcements and keeping the message brief to occupy less display space on each page. Link the message to a discussion for more context, guidance, and optional conversation. For non-critical messages or extended announcements, use a discussion instead.

For more details, see Customizing user messages for your enterprise in the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.

See more