The “Help improve” page footer#

Every page in a user guide ends with a “Help improve this page” box, just below the previous/next page links. The box gathers the page’s improvement and provenance information in one place:

An “Edit this page on GitHub” link that opens the page’s source file in GitHub’s editor, resolved by the documenteer.ext.githubeditlink extension.
A “This page was last modified on…” timestamp derived from the page’s Git commit history by the documenteer.ext.lastmodified extension, localized to the reader’s timezone.

Site-wide configuration#

Each item is controlled by a setting in documenteer.toml:

sphinx.show_github_edit_link toggles the edit link (default true).
sphinx.show_last_updated toggles the timestamp (default true).

When both are disabled — or neither applies to a page, as on generated pages like the search page — the box is omitted entirely.

Hiding the box on individual pages#

Some pages don’t benefit from the box; a site’s home page, for example, often has a curated layout where the box would be a distraction. Set the hide_content_footer file-wide metadata field to suppress the box on a single page.

In a reStructuredText file, add a field list at the very top of the file, before the title:

index.rst#

:hide_content_footer:

My homepage
===========

In a Markdown (MyST) file, use YAML front matter:

index.md#

---
hide_content_footer: true
---

# My homepage

The rest of the site is unaffected; only pages carrying the field hide the box.

Printed pages and PDF output#

The box is interactive chrome, so it is omitted from printed output along with the rest of the page navigation — a link to GitHub’s editor isn’t actionable on paper. In its place, printed pages end with a print-only provenance footer carrying the metadata that still matters in a fixed document: the “last modified” timestamp and the page’s canonical URL.

The hide_content_footer metadata field suppresses the print footer along with the box.