Who sees each item
Explains item audiences, the board's default audience, label rules, the audience picker on an item, and how imported Linear items get their audience.
Every item on your board has one audience: Everyone, Specific customers or Only my team. The audience is the second visibility layer. It only applies to people who can already open the board. The project owner and team admins set board-wide rules in Settings > Visibility and can change single items in Feedback.
The three audiences
| Audience | Who sees the item on the board |
|---|---|
| Everyone | Anyone who can open your board. |
| Specific customers | Only the customers you pick, plus your team. |
| Only my team | Your team only. |
On an Invited only board, Everyone means your team and every customer you invited. On a Signed-in people board, it means anyone who signs in. See Who can open the board.
How an item gets its audience
An item's audience is chosen in one of three ways:
- By hand. The project owner or a team admin picks the audience on the item or with Change audience in Feedback. Label rules never change an item whose audience was picked by hand.
- By a label rule. A rule in Settings > Visibility matched the item's labels.
- By the default. No rule matched, so the item got the board's default audience.
The default audience
The last lines of the Who sees each item card set the defaults:
- Every item is visible to (shown as Everything else is visible to once you have rules) applies to items that no rule matches. You can choose Everyone or Only my team. A new project uses Everyone.
- Posts from customers and visitors are visible to applies to posts made on the board by people outside your team. Label rules do not change these posts.
| Posts setting | What happens to a new post from outside your team |
|---|---|
| Everyone | A visitor's post is visible to everyone. A customer's post is visible to that customer and your team. |
| Only my team | Only your team sees the new post, plus the person who posted it if they were signed in. To share it, change its audience in Feedback. |
Label rules
A label rule says: items with any of these labels are visible to a chosen audience. Only the project owner and team admins can manage rules.
Add a label rule
- Open Settings > Visibility.
- In the Who sees each item card, select Add rule. If the card only shows one sentence, select Choose who sees what first.
- Under Items with any of these labels, choose one or more labels.
- Under Are visible to, pick Everyone, Specific customers or Only my team. For Specific customers, tick one or more customers. You must add a customer first.
- Optional: give the rule a Name.
- Before you save, the dialog tells you how many items will move to a new audience. Select Add rule to save.
To change a rule, select Edit next to it. To remove it, select the delete button and confirm with Delete rule. After you delete a rule, the items it matched follow your other rules or the default. Items whose audience was picked by hand do not change.
When an item matches more than one rule
The more private rule wins:
- Only my team beats Specific customers and Everyone.
- Specific customers beats Everyone.
- When several Specific customers rules match, their customers add up. The item is shown to all of those customers.
- A Specific customers rule whose customers were all deleted counts as Only my team.
Rules apply again every time you add, edit or delete a rule, or change the default. New and updated items also follow your rules. Rules skip items whose audience was picked by hand.
Change the audience of one item
- In the dashboard, open Feedback.
- Open the audience picker on the item and choose Everyone, Specific customers or Only my team.
The picker shows where the current audience came from: Chosen by a rule. or Chosen by your "Everything else" setting. If you pick another audience, the item keeps it. To hand the item back to your rules, choose Follow label rules in the picker, or select Follow rules in the item's detail view.
Change many items at once
- In Feedback, select the items.
- Choose Change audience.
- Pick Everyone, Specific customers or Only my team.
After a bulk change, the items keep the audience you picked until you use Follow rules on them. Settings > Visibility has no bulk tool. Its item counts link to Feedback, filtered by audience.
Items imported from Linear
Items imported from Linear follow your label rules and the board's default audience, like any other new item. If the default is Only my team, imported items stay with your team unless a label rule shares them.
What people outside the audience see
A person who is not in an item's audience does not see that item on the board or the roadmap, and it does not show up when they search. They cannot see its comments or vote on it, and they do not get notifications about it.
There is one exception. A person who was signed in when they posted an item always sees that item, even if you later set it to Only my team.
Common questions
How do I hide an item from my customers?
Open the item's audience picker in Feedback and choose Only my team. The item is then shown on the board to your team only. If a customer posted the item while signed in, that person still sees it.
Why did my label rule not change some items?
Rules skip items whose audience was picked by hand. Choose Follow label rules on those items to let your rules decide again.
An item matches two rules. Which one wins?
The more private rule wins. Only my team beats Specific customers, and Specific customers beats Everyone.
Can I make every new Linear item private by default?
Yes. In Settings > Visibility, set Every item is visible to to Only my team. Imported items then stay with your team unless a label rule shares them.
Can the default audience be Specific customers?
No. The default audience can only be Everyone or Only my team. To share items with specific customers, use a label rule or set the audience on each item.