They're not private, they're "secret". The descriptive text when choosing between "secret" and "public" says, "Secret gists are hidden by search engines but vis

They're not private, they're "secret". The descriptive text when choosing between "secret" and "public" says, "Secret gists are hidden by search engines but visible to anyone you give the URL to", though to be fair this isn't as prominent as it could be. Given that private repositories used to be a paid-only feature and that gists as a feature haven't been substantially updated in the last 8 years, I'm not all that surprised that there isn't a "private" gist type. https://docs.github.com/en/github/writing-on-github/creating-gists#about-gists https://docs.github.com/en/github/writing-on-github/creating... > Secret gists don't show up in Discover and are not searchable. Secret gists aren't private. If you send the URL of a secret gist to a friend , they'll be able to see it. However, if someone you don't know discovers the URL, they'll also be able to see your gist. If you need to keep your code away from prying eyes, you may want to create a private repository instead.