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# Protected tags **(FREE)**

Protected tags:

- Allow control over who has permission to create tags.
- Prevent accidental update or deletion once created.

Each rule allows you to match either:

- An individual tag name.
- Wildcards to control multiple tags at once.

This feature evolved out of [protected branches](protected_branches.md)

## Who can modify a protected tag

By default:

- To create tags, you must have the [Maintainer role](../permissions.md).
- No one can update or delete tags.

## Configuring protected tags

To protect a tag, you need to have at least the [Maintainer role](../permissions.md).

1. Go to the project's **Settings > Repository**.

1. From the **Tag** dropdown menu, select the tag you want to protect or type and click **Create wildcard**. In the screenshot below, we chose to protect all tags matching `v*`:

   ![Protected tags page](img/protected_tags_page_v12_3.png)

1. From the **Allowed to create** dropdown, select users with permission to create
   matching tags, and click **Protect**:

   ![Allowed to create tags dropdown](img/protected_tags_permissions_dropdown_v12_3.png)

1. After done, the protected tag displays in the **Protected tags** list:

   ![Protected tags list](img/protected_tags_list_v12_3.png)

## Wildcard protected tags

You can specify a wildcard protected tag, which protects all tags
matching the wildcard. For example:

| Wildcard Protected Tag | Matching Tags                 |
|------------------------|-------------------------------|
| `v*`                   | `v1.0.0`, `version-9.1`       |
| `*-deploy`             | `march-deploy`, `1.0-deploy`  |
| `*gitlab*`             | `gitlab`, `gitlab/v1`         |
| `*`                    | `v1.0.1rc2`, `accidental-tag` |

Two different wildcards can potentially match the same tag. For example,
`*-stable` and `production-*` would both match a `production-stable` tag.
In that case, if _any_ of these protected tags have a setting like
**Allowed to create**, then `production-stable` also inherit this setting.

If you click on a protected tag's name, GitLab displays a list of
all matching tags:

![Protected tag matches](img/protected_tag_matches.png)

## Prevent tag creation with the same name as branches

A tag and a branch with identical names can contain different commits. If your
tags and branches use the same names, users running `git checkout`
commands might check out the _tag_ `qa` when they instead meant to check out
the _branch_ `qa`.

To prevent this problem:

1. Identify the branch names you do not want used as tags.
1. As described in [Configuring protected tags](#configuring-protected-tags),
   create a protected tag:

   - For the **Name**, provide a name, such as `stable`. You can also create a wildcard
     like `stable-*` to match multiple names, like `stable-v1` and `stable-v2`.
   - For **Allowed to Create**, select **No one**.
   - Select **Protect**.

Users can still create branches, but not tags, with the protected names.

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