Drive Owners, Admins, and Editors can invite collaborators to a specific project without adding them to the full Drive. This is ideal for one-off collaborations, collecting feedback, or giving someone limited editing access without granting full Drive access. Learn more about Drive membership roles.
Project collaborator permissions
There are two project-level collaborator types to consider.
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Project editors have limited editing permissions and can export a shared project in your drive. Note, project editors cannot initiate transcription or use any AI-based tools (anything in Underlord, Avatars, or text-to-speech) or upload certain media formats (like Apple ProRes or QuickTime RLE). Full feature access requires Drive-level membership.
- Project viewers can view and comment on the project within the project editor.
| Feature / Action | Project Editor | Project Viewer |
|---|---|---|
| View and comment | ✅ | ✅ |
| Make edits | ✅ | ❌ |
| Export project | ✅ | ❌ |
| Use AI tools (Underlord, TTS, Avatars) | ❌ | ❌ |
If you’re on a Business or Enterprise plan, you have the option to add a Basic member to your Drive. Unlike project Editors and project Viewers, Basic is a Drive-level membership, not a project-level collaborator.
Basic Drive members are only available for Drives with a Business or Enterprise subscription. Learn more about Basic Drive memberships.
Invite a project collaborator
Invite a project collaborator from the Drive view or the project editor:
- From the Drive view, click the options icon (three vertical dots) to the right of a project row and select Project access from the list of options.
- From the main editor, select the + Project access icon (a circular button with a plus icon) in the top right corner.
With the project access panel open, enter your collaborator's email, select the users' project permissions (either can edit or can comment), and then select invite to project.
Adding collaborators to a specific project is different than adding members to your Drive. If you check the box to “Also invite to Drive”, you’re adding that person to your Drive — not just the project. This will trigger a charge for an additional Editor seat and count towards your plan's seat limits.
To avoid charges, leave the box unchecked to share access only to the specific project. Learn more about how billing works in Descript.
Change or remove a collaborator's access
To change the access level for a collaborator:
- Open the project access panel
- Select the permissions dropdown
- Select Can edit, Can comment, Make owner (see Change project ownership for more info), or Remove member.
Even if you’ve removed a collaborator, they may still have access to your project if the link is set to Can view or Can comment. Be sure to update the link sharing settings if you want to restrict access.
Adjust project permissions for Drive members
You can set the level of project access you want all drive members to have for individual projects. From the project access panel, set the project access level for all members of the drive at the bottom of the panel.