A way to make each user's books private, but able to share common books? #2137

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OVERLORD · 2026-02-05T03:04:33+03:00

OVERLORD commented

2026-02-05 03:04:33 +03:00

Originally created by @LavaTiger99 on GitHub (Mar 2, 2021).

Hi,
We are using this as an evernote/onenote replacement. Ideally each user's login would show them private books, but also have access to any shared books by any other user. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks

Originally created by @LavaTiger99 on GitHub (Mar 2, 2021). Hi, We are using this as an evernote/onenote replacement. Ideally each user's login would show them private books, but also have access to any shared books by any other user. Is there a way to do this? Thanks

OVERLORD closed this issue

2026-02-05 03:04:38 +03:00

OVERLORD commented

2026-02-05 03:04:48 +03:00

@ssddanbrown commented on GitHub (Mar 2, 2021):

Hi @LavaTiger99,

It's not the primary focus of BookStack, to fit in that permission structure, since the platform is really intended to be fairly open across an instance. That said, You can kind of do this via the permission system.

When creating/editing a role you'll see a bunch of "own" permission options, that alter the permissions based on their ownership of an item. You'd need to take advantage of those & remove many of the "all" permissions. For shared books you'd need to specifically update the permissions of those books to enable the "view" permission for applicable books.

@ssddanbrown commented on GitHub (Mar 2, 2021): Hi @LavaTiger99, It's not the primary focus of BookStack, to fit in that permission structure, since the platform is really intended to be fairly open across an instance. That said, You can kind of do this via the permission system. When creating/editing a role you'll see a bunch of "own" permission options, that alter the permissions based on their ownership of an item. You'd need to take advantage of those & remove many of the "all" permissions. For shared books you'd need to specifically update the permissions of those books to enable the "view" permission for applicable books.

OVERLORD commented

2026-02-05 03:04:54 +03:00

@LavaTiger99 commented on GitHub (Mar 3, 2021):

Ok, thank you. Have confirmed this works.

I know this is not what it is meant for, but I haven't found a solution that has as nice an interface & easy user experience as bookstack for notetaking.

I created a user and a group (role) for each user:
user: person1 role: person1
In each role, selected every "all" box.
Then I went through the book's permissions that I wanted to share, and selected person1 (read/write/edit), person2 (read/write/edit), etc

@LavaTiger99 commented on GitHub (Mar 3, 2021): Ok, thank you. Have confirmed this works. I know this is not what it is meant for, but I haven't found a solution that has as nice an interface & easy user experience as bookstack for notetaking. I created a user and a group (role) for each user: user: person1 role: person1 In each role, selected every "all" box. Then I went through the book's permissions that I wanted to share, and selected person1 (read/write/edit), person2 (read/write/edit), etc

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Reference: starred/BookStack#2137