---
url: /technical/access-tags-and-application-security.md
description: >-
  Access Tags are MODLR's Application Security layer, controlling which screens
  and elements a user can access.
---

# Access Tags and Application Security

Application Security is managed through **Access Tags**: created within an application, and allocated to users at the application level, they control who can view and interact with specific screens and dimensions.

Two tag types exist:

* **Screen Tags**: control which screens are visible to a user. They also drive navigation visibility - [Menu](/technical/menus) entries pointing at screens the user has no tag for aren't shown at all, and [Custom Pages](/technical/custom-pages) can hide their own content per tag using `<!--tag:NAME-->` blocks. See [What a screen tag controls](/technical/access-tags-screen#what-a-screen-tag-controls).
* **Element Tags**: control which elements within a dimension a user can access, at Read, Write, or No Access level. *Deprecated in favour of [Instance Security](/technical/instance-security), which offers more flexible, group-based control over element access.*

![The Access Tags page, annotated to show the Type column and the Dimension and Hierarchy columns used by element tags](/access-tag.png)

**Related entries:** [Screen Access Tags](/technical/access-tags-screen), [Element Access Tags](/technical/access-tags-element), [MODLR Security](/technical/modlr-security), [Instance Security](/technical/instance-security), [security.application](/process-functions/security-application), [ApplicationTags](/process-functions/security-application-tags), [ScreenTag](/process-functions/security-application-screentag), [ElementTag](/process-functions/security-application-elementtag), [Security Functions](/process-functions/security-functions)