Better ways to share code and text online.

Choose a workflow

Start with who should be able to open the snippet.

Code sharing is mostly an access and readability decision. A public paste works when you intentionally want a snippet to be discoverable and easy to reference later. An unlisted link is useful when you want frictionless sharing without placing the paste in public discovery. Password-protected and private modes make sense when possession of the URL should not be the only access control.

After visibility, think about how the recipient will use the content. Human readers benefit from preserved indentation, syntax highlighting and a stable page. Scripts and command-line tools often need a raw representation instead. If paste creation becomes repetitive, an API can move the same workflow into bots, build systems or internal tools without losing the visibility rules around each snippet.

The guides above go deeper into those choices and explain when a lightweight paste service is a better fit than chat formatting, a full collaborative editor or a public repository. They also cover the difference between convenient link sharing and genuinely restricted access, so you can choose the narrowest mode that still fits the task.