Public, Private and Unlisted snaps

Alongside using tracks and channels to control which releases are available, and restrictions per-territory, Snap developers can also control who has access to their snaps by marking a published snap as either public, private or unlisted.

When registering a snap, there is an option to make its listing either public or private. After registration, this value can be changed from the Settings page of the Snap Store web UI for the registered snap:

A snap’s Visibility settings can be one of the following:

  • Unlisted: the snap is omitted from search results but it can still be installed by any user when they explicitly asks for it by name
  • Public : the snap will appear in local snap find searches, in the Snap Store, and other application installers that access the store
  • Private : the snap is hidden from search results, and can only be installed from your account and from accounts linked to your account

If a previously public snap is made private, installed versions are unaffected. However, those snaps will no longer receive updates, and if the user removes them, they can’t be re-installed from the store.

Access to a private snap can be shared by adding individual email addresses to the text field on the Collaboration page of a snap’s dashboard.snapcraft.io entry:

Visibility from snapcraft

With Snapcraft installed and logged-in to a developer account, the snapcraft names command can be used to check the visibility status of snaps associated with the developer account:

$ snapcraft names
Name             Since                 Visibility    Notes
cameractrls      2022-11-28T18:15:44Z  public        -
domoticz         2020-01-17T17:21:43Z  public        -
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@degville looks like the screenshots are missing, at least they don’t render in the forum or on the docs site.

Thanks for letting me know. It seems the forum purges image assets after some random period. I’ll look into it and re-instate the images.

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