Share a screenshot with a password and an expiry date

A share link is not the same thing as an attachment. It stays sharp, it works on any device, and unlike a file that has left your hands it can be given a deadline, a password, or a single use. This page explains exactly what each of those three controls does in Screenshot Files, and when each one is the right choice.

The problem with sending the file

Once a screenshot leaves as an attachment it is gone. It sits in a mailbox you do not control, it gets forwarded to a thread you were never on, and it is still there in a year. Along the way most channels quietly damage it: mail clients recompress large images, chat apps rescale them, and a screenshot of a settings page or an error message is exactly the kind of image where the recompression eats the text you were trying to show.

A link avoids both problems at once. The image is served at the quality you uploaded, and because it is served rather than sent, it stays something you can still change your mind about.

Set an expiry date

Every share link in Screenshot Files can be given a lifetime of one day, seven days, or thirty days. Seven days is the default, because most screenshots are shared to settle one question and that question is settled inside a week.

When the link expires it stops resolving. There is no page saying who owned it and no way to tell what used to be there. The underlying record is deleted seven days after that, so an expired link does not sit in the database indefinitely either.

You can also create a link with no expiry, for the cases where a deadline would be wrong: documentation, a bug report that may be reopened months later, a receipt someone might need again. That is a deliberate choice you make per link rather than a default you inherit.

When to pick one day

One day is the right setting for anything you are sending into a conversation that is happening right now. A screenshot of a form someone is filling in, a chart you are talking through on a call, a confirmation number. The link outlives the conversation by a few hours and no longer.

When to pick thirty days

Thirty days suits work that has a review cycle. A design someone will comment on next week, a bug that has to be reproduced before anyone can fix it, a screenshot attached to a ticket that will sit in a backlog for a while. Long enough to survive a holiday, short enough that it is not permanent by accident.

Add a password

A password turns the link into two secrets instead of one. Anyone who has the link still has to enter the password before the image is shown, so a link pasted into the wrong channel, forwarded by mistake, or found in someone's browser history is not enough on its own.

Passwords are between 12 and 72 characters. The floor is 12 on purpose: a four-digit code on a link that is already public is theatre, not protection. Send the password through a different channel than the link. A link in email and a password in a chat message is a meaningfully harder thing to intercept than both in the same email.

The password is stored hashed, never in a form we can read back, so it cannot be recovered for you. If you forget it, set a new one on the same link.

Make the link open once

A single-view link stops working after it has been opened. It is the strongest of the three controls and the one people underuse. It fits any screenshot that is meant for one person and one moment: a temporary credential someone has to type in, a document number, anything where the second person to open the link is by definition the wrong person.

It comes with one honest limitation, and it is worth knowing before you rely on it. A link preview bot counts as an opening. Several chat and mail platforms fetch a URL to build a preview card before a human ever clicks it, and that fetch consumes the single view just as a person would.

There is a clean way around it: put a password on a single-view link as well. A protected link answers the first request with the password form and does not spend its one view until the password has actually been entered, so a preview bot cannot burn it. If you are combining the two controls anyway for a sensitive screenshot, you get this for free.

Quick Share, when you do not want to decide anything

Quick Share is a separate, deliberately unconfigurable path: one press produces a link that stops working after 24 hours. No expiry menu, no password field, no decisions. It exists because the settings above are the right tool perhaps a quarter of the time, and the rest of the time you want the screenshot out of your hands and into someone else's within two seconds.

Quick Share links carry no password and are not single view. If a screenshot needs either of those, use a regular share link instead.

How the image itself is served

Opening a share link does not expose a permanent public address for your screenshot. The page requests a short-lived signed URL to the stored image, and that URL is useless once it expires. Copying the image address out of the page and pasting it somewhere therefore does not create a second, uncontrolled way in that outlives your expiry setting.

Common questions

Can I revoke a link I already sent?

Yes. Deleting the share link stops it resolving immediately, whatever expiry it was given. The screenshot itself stays in your library; only the way in is removed.

Does the recipient need an account?

No. A share link opens for anyone who has it, and the password if you set one. They do not sign up, install anything, or see your library.

Can I change the expiry after sending the link?

Yes. Expiry, password and single-view are settings on the link rather than properties baked in when it was created, so you can shorten a link that turned out to be more sensitive than you thought without sending a new address.

What happens to the screenshot when the link expires?

Nothing. Expiry ends the link, not the image. The screenshot stays in your library under your normal plan retention, and you can share it again.