The short version
Drop text in the box, hit create, get a link. Send that link to anyone and they see the same text. That’s the whole loop.
It’s the thing you reach for when a snippet is too long for a chat message but not worth a gist. A stack trace. A chunk of YAML. The 200-line config someone needs to eyeball. Paste it, share the URL, move on.
What you can set
Every paste carries a few knobs:
- Syntax tags the language so you remember what’s in there later. Plain, JavaScript, Python, JSON, HTML, CSS, SQL, Bash, or Markdown.
- Title is optional. Handy when you’re firing off three pastes in a row and don’t want to guess which is which.
- Expiry is the important one. Pick 1 hour, 1 day, 7 days, or 30 days. When the clock runs out, the paste is gone for good.
- Burn after reading deletes the paste the instant someone opens it. The link works exactly once. Great for a token or a one-time note you don’t want sitting around.
Pastes top out at 400,000 characters, which is a lot of text. If you’re hitting that wall you probably want the file sharer instead.
How sharing actually works
You create a paste, the server stores it and hands back a URL with an id baked in. Open that URL and the page reads the id, fetches the paste, and shows it in a scrollable monospace block with a copy button. No id in the URL means you’re in create mode. Same page, two jobs.
Burn pastes behave a little differently on the receiving end. The first open returns the content and tells the server to delete it. Refresh after that and you’ll get the “does not exist or has expired” screen, because it genuinely doesn’t exist anymore.
Worth knowing before you paste
Here’s the honest bit: your text lives on our server until it expires or gets burned, and it isn’t end to end encrypted. We auto-delete it on schedule, but treat it like any normal web service. Fine for code, logs, configs, and notes. For real secrets like production credentials, use burn-after-reading and rotate them anyway, or don’t put them here at all. Maximum retention is 30 days, full stop.
Links are unguessable ids, not sequential numbers, so nobody’s going to stumble onto your paste by counting. But anyone who has the link can open it (once, if you set burn). Share accordingly.
Common questions
How long does a paste stick around?
As long as the expiry you picked: 1 hour, 1 day, 7 days, or 30 days. After that it’s deleted automatically. There’s no way to extend it after the fact, so choose the window you actually need.
What does burn after reading do exactly?
The paste self-destructs the first time someone loads it. One view, then gone. Reloading the link afterward shows the expired message because the content is already deleted.
Can I edit a paste after creating it?
Nope. Pastes are immutable once they’re up. Need a change? Create a fresh one and share the new link.
Is there a size limit?
Yep, 400,000 characters per paste. For anything bigger, or for non-text stuff like images and zips, grab the file sharer.
Are my pastes private?
They’re not indexed or listed anywhere, and the ids are random. But they’re stored unencrypted on the server and anyone with the link can open them. Don’t paste anything you’d be unhappy seeing on a normal server.