Clarifying JetBrains IDE Access to GitHub Account

Question

Is granting access to the GitHub account through the JetBrains IDE OAuth flow secure and restricted to the user's own repositories without sharing code with JetBrains servers or other third parties?

Answer

Granting access through the JetBrains IDE OAuth flow is designed to allow the IDE to access the user's authorized repositories on GitHub for their personal use. After granting access, IDE uses the GitHub API and the related OAuth credential to access GitHub server for Git-related features (e.g., git pull), and these API requests do not go through JetBrains servers. This operation does not upload or share the user's repository data with JetBrains servers or with any corporate entities:

• The integration provides access exclusively to the GitHub repositories the user has permissions for and is intended solely for the IDE instance's functionality.
• In some cases, such as during the cloning process, the IDE may retrieve a list of accessible repositories to facilitate direct cloning. This access is also limited to the user's own authorization and does not relay information outside the intended context.

IDE needs GitHub permissions "Create gists", "Read org and team membership", "Read org projects", "Full control of private repositories", "Update github action workflows" to provide GitHub integration for IntelliJ-based IDEs. There is no way to revoke one of these permissions when using JetBrains IDE OAuth flow, but you can revoke the all grants under https://github.com/settings/applications. Or you could use the Log In with Token option with limited permissions configured.

For more information, users can refer to the relevant documentation.