How to share markdown instantly, without an account

2026-10-09 · 4 min read

To share markdown without an account, open sharemd.net, paste your markdown into the editor and select Share. You get a read-only link you can send right away. There is no signup, no login and no cost, for you or for the people who open the link.

The steps below cover the details, what your reader will see, and the limits worth knowing before you send anything.

Steps

1. Open sharemd.net. The editor opens directly; there is no landing page or signup form in front of it.
2. Paste or type your markdown. If you want to check the result first, switch to Preview or Split (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P cycles the views).
3. Optionally give the document a title with a frontmatter block at the top (title: Release notes between two --- lines). The title is used for the document and the block is hidden from the preview.
4. Select Share. sharemd.net creates the document and shows two links: a read-only link and a write link.
5. Send the read-only link to whoever needs it. Keep the write link to yourself, or give it only to people who should be able to edit.

That is the whole process. The person who opens the link sees the rendered document in their browser and does not need an account either.

What your reader sees

The read view renders CommonMark plus the extensions most people expect from markdown written today:

• Tables, strikethrough, task lists (- [ ]), footnotes and automatic links.
• A table of contents, generated automatically when the document has three or more headings.
• Syntax highlighting for JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, HTML/XML, CSS, JSON, SQL, Bash, YAML, Go, Rust, Java and C++. Code in other languages shows as plain monospaced text.
• Mermaid diagrams from ```mermaid blocks, and math written with KaTeX syntax ($inline$ and $$block$$).

Raw HTML inside the markdown is not rendered; it shows as text. If your source relies on HTML tags for layout, convert those parts to plain markdown before sharing. To check rendering without sharing anything, use the markdown viewer.

Read link or write link

The read-only link is the one to post in a channel or an email. Anyone who has it can read the document, and nothing more.

The write link says “anyone with this can edit”, and that is literal. Whoever has it can change the document. There is no way today to revoke a write link once it has been sent, so treat it like a key: keep it, and share it only on purpose.

Other ways to hand it over

Sometimes a link is not the right format. From the same document you can also:

• Copy Formatted, which copies the rendered document as rich text to paste into email, a docs tool or a chat tool.
• Get embed code, an iframe of the read view, for a page or internal tool that accepts embeds.
• Show a QR code of the read link, useful when the reader is in the room with a phone.
• Export the original .md, or a self-contained .html file. In the HTML export, code blocks are not syntax-highlighted and Mermaid and math stay as source. The markdown to HTML page covers that export in more detail.

How long the link lasts

Documents created without an account expire 15 days after creation, and their content is deleted automatically. A badge on the document shows the days left, and turns red at three days or fewer. After that, the link shows a page saying the document has expired.

There is no way today to delete a document early or extend it. If you need the content after 15 days, export the .md before the date. The reasoning behind expiry as a default is in why ephemeral documents.

Things to check before you send

• Size. A document can be up to 500 KB of markdown. That is a lot of text, but a pasted log file can exceed it.
• Who can read it. Shared documents are not indexed by search engines and can only be reached by whoever has the link. That does not make them secret: anyone the link reaches can read the document. Leave out passwords, tokens and anything you would not forward by email.
• Phones. On screens narrower than 768px the Split view is not available; Editor and Preview work as usual.

Frequently asked questions

Does the person I send the link to need an account?

No. Reading, like creating and sharing, works without an account. The reader opens the link in any browser.

Can I change the document after sharing it?

Yes, through the write link. Edits made there are what readers see on the read-only link.

Does sharemd.net read or rewrite my content with AI?

No. Content is not summarized, translated or rewritten by AI. It is stored as you wrote it and rendered as markdown.