Sharing and public links

A public link makes a cluster viewable by anyone with the URL, with no account and no sign-in. Links are view-only, include nested clusters by default and can expire after 7 or 30 days. Anyone who opens one can join to keep the cluster in their Clusters, and ask you to let them edit. Granting edit access is a separate choice — either an invite link that asks the recipient to sign in, or an emailed invitation to a named person.

Updated November 1, 2026

The Share panel answers one question — who can open this cluster? — in the order you decide it: the link first, under Share a link, then Invite people, then Who has access, one list of the people who can open it. Every row has the same shape: who on the left, what they can do on the right — a dropdown wherever you can change it. Copy link sits right under Anyone with the link, and anything more detailed about links is behind Link settings, under it. Done sits at the bottom and stays put while the rest scrolls.

You open it from Share in the board header (a round button on a phone), from ⌘K → "Share this cluster", or by right-clicking any cluster in the sidebar and choosing Share… — the last of these shares the cluster you right-clicked, not the one currently on screen.

The link — what it grants

The link has its own row at the top: Anyone with the link. Its dropdown has three answers:

A cluster with no link yet starts on Can edit, so the people you send it to can join in. If the cluster already has a view link out, the row starts on Can view and Copy link hands out that same link. The Copy link on the "send it to someone?" message follows the same rule.

Choosing a setting that already has a link copies it straight away. Copy link, right under it, copies it again any time, and makes the link the first time. Switching between Can view and Can edit never revokes anything — a link you have already sent someone keeps working, and the row tells you it is still live. Only No link revokes, and it asks first.

Owners and co-owners can revoke any link on the cluster. An editor can revoke the links they made themselves, so when an editor picks No link their own links are revoked and the panel says how many links other people made are still live. Those stay until the person who made them, the owner or a co-owner revokes them.

An edit link is not an editable public link. It grants nothing on its own: the person who opens it sees a preview and an explicit Join step, and access is created when they sign in and take it.

Joining from a view link

Someone who opens a view link sees who sent it and a Join button. Joining asks them to sign in (a code to their email, nothing else), then puts the cluster in their sidebar under Shared with me. They see your changes as they happen, and still cannot change anything. You get a note that they joined, and they appear in Who has access as a viewer you can remove like anyone else. A new account that joins this way counts as your referral, as on an edit link.

A link that leaves sub-clusters out cannot be joined when the cluster has sub-clusters, because a person added to a cluster can open the clusters inside it. They can still look, and you can invite them by email instead.

Turning a link off stops new people joining through it. People who already joined keep their access until you remove them.

Asking to edit

A viewer who joined sees View only and Ask to edit at the top of the cluster. Pressing it tells the person whose link they joined and the cluster's owner, in the bell, as a note in the app and by email when they are away. Let them edit makes them an editor at once; it counts toward your editors like any other, so it is refused when the account has no room. Not now tells them nothing, and they can ask again a day later. Open asks also wait at the top of the cluster's Who has access list.

What "view" includes

Read-only means nobody can change the cluster. It does not mean the files stay behind glass: anyone who opens the link can download the images, audio, video, PDFs and attachments on it, at full quality and under their original names (for images and videos, the ones uploaded since names were kept). That is what makes a link worth sending — a sample pack or a stills selects is only useful if the other person can take it away.

Treat the link itself as the access control. If the contents should not leave, do not put them behind a public link.

Link settings

Everything that qualifies a link lives in one disclosure under the picker.

With sub-clusters included, viewers navigate into nested boards with breadcrumbs. With it off, the link shows exactly one board.

The same disclosure lists every link currently live on the cluster, with what each one grants, how many people have joined through it, when it expires, and buttons to copy or revoke it.

An AI assistant you have connected can do the same two things with share_board and unshare_board: hand back the cluster's view link, or revoke it. It gets the link that already exists when there is one, and a link it makes shows just that one board unless it asks for the nested ones too. Scripts use the same endpoint.

By default a shared board tells search engines not to index it. It is reachable by anyone with the URL, but it will not turn up in a search unless you allow indexing or publish it to Explore. Allowing indexing opens up once an account is 72 hours old.

The board renders in a real canvas — viewers pan, zoom and open images at full size. It is not a flattened image.

On a phone, a large board opens framed on its top-left corner at a size you can actually read, rather than fitting the whole thing into an unreadable speck. Pinch out to see everything; nothing is hidden, only the starting view differs. Boards small enough to fit legibly still open showing all of themselves.

Inviting people

Use this when you have addresses and want named people rather than whoever holds a URL. Enter one address or several separated by commas, choose what they get — Can edit or Can view — and how far it reaches — This cluster or Whole workspace — and press Invite. The line under the box says exactly what that means, by name: that they can edit this cluster and its sub-clusters, say, or every cluster in the workspace. If they do not have an account yet they get an invitation and the access is waiting for them when they sign up.

Inviting someone new

The panel says, under the invite box, what an invitation is worth; Details says the rest. Someone who joins Clusters through your invitation starts with 25 extra cards and 0.5GB of storage, and you get 25 bonus cards and 0.5GB as soon as they have opened the app and placed their first card — whichever role you invited them as, to one cluster or to the whole workspace. A new account that joins through one of your edit links counts the same way. Inviting someone who already has an account shares the cluster just as well but earns no reward. Once anyone has joined through you, Details also shows how many, and what you have earned. The limits are on Referrals.

Each account can send 20 invitations a day, or 5 on its first day. Sharing a cluster with someone who already has an account counts, because they get an email too. Inviting the same address to the same cluster again does not, and neither does changing someone's role: neither sends anything. Past the limit, nothing is sent and the share panel tells you when you can send more. For a bigger audience, a link reaches everyone at once.

Accounts that reach the same inbox share one allowance: an address with a +tag, or a Gmail address written with extra dots, counts as the address itself.

One address receives at most 3 invitation emails a day, from every sender combined. Past that the access is still granted; only the email is skipped, so the person finds the cluster waiting when they next sign in.

Invitation emails are also watched across all of Clusters, not only per account. If an unusual number go out at once, or an account looks like it is sending in bulk, the emails are held for review instead of sent. An account under review sees "sharing is paused on this account while we review unusual activity" in the share panel; everything else about it, including its own clusters, works as before. While the review runs, the invitations it already sent can't be accepted, and if the account is less than a week old its share links pause too. All of it works again, and held invitations are sent, if the review clears it.

Only workspace owners and co-owners get the Whole workspace choice — it grants every cluster in the workspace, not just this one. Everyone else invites to this cluster, and the panel says so. Share workspace… in a workspace's right-click or ⋯ menu opens the panel with Whole workspace already picked.

Editors are free on every plan. See Collaborating.

Inviting a whole workspace

A new workspace's setup offers one link that brings people into the whole workspace, every cluster and file in it, as editors. It is the setup's invite step, and the one time it asks again, that make it: Copy link on a computer, Share invite link on a phone. A phone with no share sheet copies the link instead and says Copied; where the browser won't copy at all, the link itself is shown, selected, to copy by hand. Only the workspace's owner or a co-owner can make one. Making it sends nothing to anyone.

The line under the link says what that one does, from the link itself: who it lets in, for how long, and how many more people. Asking again for the same workspace gives back the link that is still live rather than a new one. An account makes at most 10 links a day, or 3 in its first 72 hours; past that, invite by email.

Opening one

Signed out, the sign-in screen names the workspace and, if they have set one, the first name of the person who sent it — never an address. Once they sign in or sign up, they are in. Someone already signed in sees Join as editor or Not now first, and someone already in the workspace is offered Open it instead. A link that has expired, been used up or stopped working says so and asks them to get a new one from whoever sent it.

A link stops working while the account that made it is under review or no longer the workspace's owner or a co-owner, and comes back if that changes. A link passed around far more widely than a team turns itself off for good; the people it already let in stay. There is no button to turn a link off yet: it ends when it expires or is used up. To take someone back out, remove them under Who has access.

When someone joins, you see "Name joined your workspace — say hi." with a Message button, or, if you are not in the app, an email — the Invite accepted one in Notifications. A new account that joins through your link within 7 days of signing up counts as your referral, as on an edit link.

Who has access

One list of the people who can open it: workspace members, people added to this cluster alone, people who reach it through a parent cluster's share, and invitations still waiting on a signup. The link has its own row at the top of the panel. The right-hand side of each row says what that person can do: a bare Can edit or Can view means this cluster (and its sub-clusters), while workspace members read Workspace · can edit or Workspace · can view.

That right-hand side is also the row's one control. For someone on this cluster alone it changes their level, moves them to the Whole workspace (owners and co-owners, for someone not already in it), or removes their access — with an undo. For a workspace member, owners and co-owners can change their level, make them a co-owner or remove them from the workspace; only the owner can make someone else the owner. An invitation still waiting on a signup can be revoked from its row. Someone who has access because a parent was shared with them is listed as via that parent; their access is changed or removed from the parent's Share panel, so their row here only says what they can do. A transfer hands over the plan too: the workspace's cards, files and storage count against the new owner's plan from then on, and they get a notice with their own numbers. The previous owner's webhooks and API service accounts are turned off, and the notice says so. To have someone run it while your plan keeps covering it, make them a co-owner instead — the transfer dialog offers that.

When someone is removed from a workspace, or leaves it, what they set up there goes with them: the links and invitations they made stop working, the files and docs they shared from it stop reaching people, they leave its conversations, and the webhooks and API service accounts they created are turned off. A link also stops working as soon as the person who made it can no longer edit the cluster, so unsharing a cluster from someone, or making them a viewer, ends their links too. People who already joined through one of those links keep what they were given.

Getting a link fast

Two presses, and the second one is already under your cursor: Share opens the panel focused on Copy link (it reads Create link & copy until the cluster has a link), so Share then Enter puts a view-only link on your clipboard. Creating it also refreshes the preview image the link will unfurl with.

Boards you are viewing without edit rights show a clear VIEW ONLY badge, so there is never ambiguity about whether your changes will stick. You cannot mint a link on one, but you can still open Share to see who has access.

Link previews

A shared link unfurls in Messages, WhatsApp, Slack, email and the rest as a picture card: the cluster's own pictures on the Clusters sun, and its name in large type. The title says who sent it ("Andrew shared “Lost Time” with you", or "invited you to edit" for an edit link) and the line under it says how many cards it holds. The card never shows the text of notes or docs. A cluster with no pictures gets a card with just its name. The card is refreshed when you open Share or copy the link.

What someone sees the first time

Someone without an account opening a shared link for the first time gets one small tip, once: Click a cluster to open it, then how to go back. A cluster with nothing inside it says how to move around instead. Any tap puts it away.

Publishing instead

To make a board genuinely public and discoverable — listed in the directory and indexable — see Explore. That is a separate, reviewed step, not something a share link does by accident.

Sharing a single file

A cluster link shares everything on the cluster. To send one video, one PDF or one mix and nothing else, share the file on its own: the person you send it to opens a page with just that file, and never sees the cluster it sits in.

Share file… is wherever the file is:

• right-click the file on the canvas
• right-click its row in Files, or open the row's menu
• the file's menu in the sidebar
• Quick look in Files
• the Share button in any full-screen view — the video player, the image viewer, the PDF viewer

Images, video, audio, PDFs and other files can all be shared this way. You need to be able to edit the cluster the file is in. A doc is shared to read or edit together instead: see Sharing a doc.

The dialog

The link is the file's own page. Open it yourself and anyone who can edit the cluster sees Manage sharing at the top, which opens the same dialog.

What the other person sees

Only the file: its name, who shared it, and the player or viewer for it — a video plays, a PDF pages, an image opens full size. Nothing else from the cluster or the workspace is on the page or reachable from it.

Nobody needs an account to view a file shared with Anyone with the link, or to download it when downloading is allowed. A file shared with Only people added asks them to sign in as the address you added. To comment, they sign in with a code sent to their email, and land back on the same file.

Comments

Anyone with Can comment can leave comments beside the file, up to 2,000 characters each.

• On video and audio, a comment is pinned to the moment the player was at, and pressing its time jumps there. Unpin it for a comment about the whole file.
• On a PDF, a comment is pinned to the page.
• A comment takes replies, one level deep.
• Anyone who can edit the cluster can Resolve or Delete any comment; everyone can delete their own. Deleting has an undo.

One person can post up to 20 comments every 10 minutes on a file.

The person who shared the file is told about every comment — a toast when they are in the app, and an email when they are not: at most one email per file every 30 minutes, and only while Comment replies is on in Notifications. Someone whose comment gets a reply is told in the app too.

When the file changes

• A new version shows on the same link. Comments made on an older version stay, labelled on an earlier version.
• Moving the file to another cluster in the same workspace keeps the link working; it follows the file.
• Deleting the file, or moving it to another workspace, ends the link.

Stopping sharing

Remove a person, or switch General access back to Only people added, and new opens are refused at once. A page someone already has open notices within a few minutes and stops showing the file.

What it cannot do

Allow downloading off hides the Download button and stops the page handing out the original file. It cannot stop someone saving what they can see — a screenshot, a screen recording, the video as it plays. If the file must not leave, do not share it.

Program and script files — an .exe, a .dmg, a shell script, an .html page and the like — never play or preview on a shared page. They are download-only, behind a warning that a file like this can run programs on a computer. A link to Anyone with the link set by an account less than 72 hours old does not open them at all.

File links are never indexed by search engines, whatever the setting on the cluster.

Sharing a file is free on every plan. The file stays where it is and counts toward its owner's storage exactly as before; sharing it makes no copy.

To send a copy instead of a live page, see Exporting a board.

Sharing a doc

A doc can be shared on its own too, to read or to edit together, live. The person you send it to opens a page with just that doc — they never see the cluster it sits in — and what they type lands in the doc itself, which stays in its cluster. Nothing is copied or moved.

Share doc… is in three places, for anyone who can edit the cluster:

• the Share button at the top of an open doc, docked or full screen
• right-click the doc on the canvas
• the doc's row menu in the list view

Who can view, who can edit

The dialog is the same as a file's, with Can view and Can edit in place of comment roles:

Whatever the dialog says, anyone who can edit the cluster can always open and manage the doc, and anyone who can only view the cluster can read it.

• Can view reads the doc as it is written, live. A reader sees no comment threads and has no toolbar.
• Can edit types, formats, adds pages, comments, replies and resolves, all landing in the doc in its cluster as they happen.
• Anyone with the link opens it with no account. On a link that can edit, someone signed out reads it with a Sign in to edit button, and lands back on the same doc once they have signed in with a code sent to their email.
• Only people added asks each person to sign in as the address you added.

What the other person sees

The doc as it looks in its cluster: its name at the top, its pages and images, and View only if they can only read it. Someone who can edit gets the toolbar, and Comments at the top opens the doc's comments beside the page. Everyone in it sees everyone else's cursor: people from the cluster see the others' names marked (guest). If they are signed in, Open in Clusters at the top opens it inside the app.

Someone editing through a link is a guest in the doc, so a few things stay with the people in its cluster:

• They cannot add images or files, embed a cluster, or link to anything in the workspace. A paste keeps its text and formatting and drops the rest; a link that is not a web or email address is dropped.
• They can start a comment, reply to any comment, and resolve or reopen one. They can delete only a comment they started, and cannot rewrite one once it is posted.
• Export (formats) is there only when Allow exporting is on. It cannot stop someone copying what they can read, or taking a screenshot.
• Up to 50 people can have one doc open through its link at once. A single change larger than 1 MB is refused, and once a doc is larger than 25 MB the people outside its cluster can read it but not edit it.

When the doc changes

• Moving the doc to another cluster in the same workspace keeps the link working. Deleting it, or moving it to another workspace, ends the link.
• Restoring a version of the cluster rolls the shared doc back too. Anyone reading or editing it through the link is moved onto the restored doc in a moment.
• Removing someone, or changing what they can do, applies within seconds, including to a doc they already have open.

Like a file, sharing a doc is free on every plan, and its link is never indexed by search engines.

Files shared with you

A file or doc someone shares with you opens inside Clusters, over whatever you were doing, with the same player, viewer or doc as its page. You get there from:

• Open on the toast that tells you a file was shared with you, while you are in the app
• its row in the list under the bell at the top right of the board (on a phone, in the top bar before Share), which keeps every notification until you read it; see Notifications
• the Shared files row under Shared with me in the sidebar, which appears once anything has been shared with you or by you, with a count of the ones you haven't opened yet
• Open in Clusters at the top of a file's page, when you open the link while signed in

The Shared page

Shared files opens the Shared page, with two tabs.

With me lists the files and docs people added you to, and the ones you opened from a link while signed in. Each row shows who shared it and when; a dot marks one you haven't opened yet. Click a row to open the file, or use its ⋯ menu:

By me lists what you have shared that is still shared, with the cluster each file is in and who can open it. Click a row to open its sharing dialog, or use its ⋯ menu: Manage sharing…, Copy link, or Stop sharing, which turns the link off and removes everyone you added, at once. Stopping has an undo that brings back the link and exactly the people it removed, and emails nobody again.

Save a copy

Add to cluster → Save a copy in the viewer, or Save a copy… on the Shared page, asks which of your clusters to put it in, then copies the original file there. The copy is yours: it lands in that cluster's Files, stays even if the person stops sharing, and counts toward that cluster's cards and storage like an upload. It is offered only when the person who shared it allows downloading, and only for files: a doc shared with you has no Save a copy.

Shortcuts

Add to cluster → Add shortcut, or Add shortcut… on the Shared page, puts a card on one of your clusters that opens the shared file or doc instead of copying it. It stays in sync with theirs — a new version they upload shows on it — and it uses no storage, though it counts as a card. Double-click it, or choose Open from its menu, to open the file in the app.

A shortcut carries no copy of the file and nothing that names it: it shows the file only to someone who can open it. Anyone else sees Shared file, and if the person stops sharing it reads No longer shared, with a Remove button. On a public link a shortcut opens nothing.

Machine-readable: /docs/collaborate/sharing.md · /llms.txt
What changed and when: /changelog