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Clarify that DO_NOT_TRACK only disables telemetry if 1 or true #45957
Description
Code of Conduct
- I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct
What article on docs.github.com is affected?
What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?
The section on environment variables currently looks like this:
Environment variables:
export GH_TELEMETRY=falseAny falsy value works:
0,false,disabled, or an empty string. You can also use theDO_NOT_TRACKconvention:export DO_NOT_TRACK=true
Saying that any falsy value works for GH_TELEMETRY right before introducing DO_NOT_TRACK can create the implication that any truthy value would be accepted for DO_NOT_TRACK. I believe this is not the case though; it looks like DO_NOT_TRACK must be 1 or true. It would be nice to clarify this.
It also seems like most people set DO_NOT_TRACK to 1 anyway, so it would be good to be explicit for the opposite reason too; we don't want people to assume that only true is accepted.
Additional information
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Activity
welcome commentedon Sep 19, 2026
Thanks for opening this issue. A GitHub docs team member should be by to give feedback soon. In the meantime, please check out the contributing guidelines.
janiceilene commentedon Sep 21, 2026
@hashcatHitman Thanks for opening an issue! I'll get this triaged for the team to take a look.
subatoi commentedon Sep 22, 2026
We're not accepting contributions for this at this time, as we need to establish whether this is the right repo/place for investigation first. Once we've established that we'll clarify whether the community can contribute, but until then I'm going to lock conversation on this issue.