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Sharing secrets

Create a secret link, send it to your recipient, and use the receipt to check its status. You can enter your own content or generate a password to share.

For a shorter walkthrough, see Send your first secret.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”

You do not need an account to create a secret link and send it yourself. Signing in lets you use the recipient email field and find receipts again in Dashboard and recent secrets. Secrets created while signed out are not added to your account later, so keep their receipt links if you need to check their status.

Write the secret, or generate one

Section titled “Write the secret, or generate one”

Type or paste the content. Save your own copy first if you will need it later. Content you enter is not shown back to you after you create the link. Create Link stays unavailable until you enter some content.

Check the content after pasting. The form truncates input beyond its character limit. The server separately rejects content over its byte limit without trimming it. Accented letters, non-Latin scripts, and emoji can use multiple bytes, so content below the displayed character limit can still be rejected.

Generate a password. This creates a random password using the length and character sets configured by the service. The web form does not let you change those settings.

Without a passphrase, the generated value can be displayed once on the receipt, within a short window after creation. With a passphrase, it is never displayed on the receipt; the recipient must reveal it through the secret link.

The signed-in creation form opens the receipt when you generate a password, even if Stay on page is enabled. That preference applies when you enter your own content. Save the generated value before leaving the receipt; a reload cannot show it again. See the full generated-password display conditions.

Choose how long it lives

Section titled “Choose how long it lives”

Choose the shortest expiration your recipient can realistically use. On the form, each choice reads like Expires in 7 days. When that lifetime ends, the stored secret is deleted even if nobody has revealed it.

Available lifetimes depend on the service and your plan. Anonymous sharing has its own maximum lifetime. A self-hosted operator configures the available options.

The receipt lasts twice the secret’s chosen lifetime, measured from creation, so you can check what happened after the secret is no longer available.

Decide who can open it

Section titled “Decide who can open it”

Anyone with the secret link can reveal it. Adding a passphrase requires them to supply both the link and the passphrase; the service does not check whether they are your intended recipient.

  • Send the passphrase through a different channel from the link, such as a phone call when you send the link by email.
  • Keep the passphrase safe. It cannot be looked up or recovered by Onetime Secret, and it is also needed to burn the secret early.
  • An incorrect passphrase does not reveal or consume the secret. Repeated incorrect attempts are rate limited.

The passphrase is an access check, not the encryption key for the content. See Data protection for the service’s encryption and data-handling overview.

Section titled “Hand over the link”

After creating the secret, send the secret link, whose address contains /secret/. Keep the receipt link, under /receipt/, private.

Copy the secret link into your chat, ticket, or email. If you are signed in, you can instead enter a recipient email address on the creation form:

  • The email contains the link, not the secret content or passphrase.
  • The address is checked before creation, but that check does not establish that the message was delivered or read.
  • Only the first address is emailed if several are supplied. Create a separate secret for each person who needs to reveal the content. Forwarding one link does not give each recipient a separate reveal.

Loading the link opens a confirmation page without consuming the secret. Selecting Click to reveal retrieves the content once. A mail scanner or chat preview that only loads the page does not consume it; software that submits the reveal action can.

After revealing the content, a recipient can save or share their own copy. The one-time limit applies to retrieval from Onetime Secret.

Check that it worked

Section titled “Check that it worked”

Do not reveal your own secret to test it. Doing so consumes it before your recipient can read it. A signed-in creator may see a warning; the app cannot identify the creator of a secret made while signed out.

Open the receipt instead. Loading it does not consume the recipient’s reveal. It shows:

  • New: the secret link has not been previewed.
  • Previewed: the link has been loaded without revealing the content. A scanner can cause this status; it does not identify your recipient.
  • Revealed: a reveal succeeded, with its time. This does not prove the intended person read the content.

See Your receipt for other statuses and the conditions for displaying a generated password. Keep the receipt private: someone with it can burn an unread secret if they also supply its passphrase when required.

To enable optional reveal emails, see Preferences.

If you need to take it back

Section titled “If you need to take it back”

Open the receipt and choose to burn the unread secret. Confirm the action and enter its passphrase if one was set. Burning permanently removes the stored secret. The recipient gets the same unavailable-secret page as for an expired or already revealed link.

If you lose the passphrase, you cannot burn the secret; it remains subject to its chosen expiry. Once a secret has been revealed, burning cannot remove any copy the recipient saved. If you need to withdraw a password or API key that someone has already read, change or revoke it in the system that issued it.

More on sharing

Section titled “More on sharing”