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What are GitHub stars, and how do you save a repository using them? GitHub stars serve two main purposes: they act as a lightweight bookmarking tool and provide a minimal social signal that indicates interest in a project. Starring a repository lets you save it for later, surface it on your profile, and organize it into custom lists so you can rediscover projects quickly.
Starring a repository is a fast way to bookmark and organize projects you want to revisit. Note that starring does not automatically subscribe you to notifications — use Watch if you want updates. You can also group starred repositories into lists to keep related projects together.
How GitHub stars work (quick overview)
  • Bookmark: Stars let you save repositories to your personal Stars page for future reference.
  • Social signal: The star count is visible publicly and indicates community interest.
  • Organization: You can place starred repositories into custom lists (for example, “work-related” or “learning”).
  • Visibility: Stars are public by default — other users can see what you’ve starred.
How to star a repository and save it to a list (step-by-step)
  1. Open the repository you want to save on GitHub.
  2. Click the Star button located at the top-right of the repository page.
  3. In the Save dialog that appears, choose to add the repository to your starred list or select one of your custom lists.
Quick reference Creating and using custom lists
  • Purpose: Use custom lists to separate concerns — e.g., “work-related”, “self-learning”, or “tools to evaluate”.
  • Naming: Choose descriptive names and consider emojis for visual scanning in the UI.
  • Adding items: After clicking Star, pick an existing list or create a new one in the Save dialog.
  • Editing lists: From your Stars page, you can rename, delete, or change the membership of lists as your needs evolve.
Example: saving work-related repositories and learning resources I created two lists: one named “work-related” and another named “self-learning” (I added emojis for quick recognition). To add a repository to a list, open the repo page, click Star, and choose the target list from the Save dialog. Finally, I want to go to KodeKloud.
The image shows a GitHub repository page for "fluxcd/flux2," a project related to continuous delivery for Kubernetes. It displays repository details like branches, tags, commits, and the file structure.
Example: saving a learning resource If you find a course repository you want to study later, open the repository page and save it to your learning list so it’s easy to find when you start studying. For example, go to the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) course page and add it to your learning list:
  • Open the course repository page.
  • Click the Star button.
  • Select your “self-learning” or equivalent list in the Save dialog.
So let’s go to Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and add it to my learning list.
This image shows a GitHub repository page for the "Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Course." It includes directories, commit details, and repository statistics such as stars, forks, and watchers.
Viewing and managing your starred repositories and lists
  • Access your Stars page from your GitHub profile to see everything you’ve starred.
  • Filter by list: On the Stars page, click a custom list name to view only repositories saved to that list.
  • Edit or delete lists: Use the list management options on the Stars page to keep your organization up to date.
  • Remove a repository from a list: Open the repo and click the Star button again to unstar it — it will be removed from all lists.
  • Privacy: Stars are public and appear on your profile as part of your public activity.
Following topics to discover related projects Topics are labels that group repositories by technology, language, or subject. They help you discover projects across GitHub that focus on the same area.
  • Click a topic (for example, the go topic) to open its topic page: https://github.com/topics/go.
  • On a topic page you can browse public repositories tagged with that topic and choose to follow it to surface related projects in your feed.
Useful links and references
  • GitHub documentation: Saving repositories with stars — https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/exploring-projects-on-github/saving-repositories-with-stars
  • Browse topics: https://github.com/topics
  • KodeKloud: Learn platform
This workflow lets you use GitHub stars to bookmark, organize, and rediscover repositories and topics that match your interests and learning goals.

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