Help Center › Getting Started › Create your first paste

Create your first paste

Creating a paste in PasteBase takes less than a minute. This guide walks you through the process step by step so you can save your first reusable snippet and start copying it with one click.

Step 1: Navigate to your team

After logging in, you'll see your teams in the sidebar. If you just created your account, you'll have a personal team already set up for you. Click on it to open the team's paste list. This is where all your pastes for that team will live.

Step 2: Click "New Paste"

Click the "New Paste" button to open the paste creation form. You'll be presented with a few options before you start writing.

Step 3: Choose your editor type

PasteBase offers three editor types, and you'll need to pick one before creating your paste. This choice is permanent for each paste, so choose the one that best fits your content:

• Rich Text — Best for formatted content like email templates, canned responses, and anything that needs bold, italic, links, or lists.
• Plain Text — Best for simple, unformatted text like addresses, quick notes, or any content where formatting doesn't matter.
• Code — Best for code snippets, shell commands, configuration files, and anything that benefits from syntax highlighting.

Step 4: Fill in the details

Give your paste a title that makes it easy to find later. Something descriptive works best — for example, "Customer welcome email" or "Docker compose restart command" rather than just "Email" or "Command".

Optionally, add a category to help organize your pastes. Categories are free-form text, so you can type anything you like — "Support emails", "DevOps", "HR templates", and so on. You can filter by category later to find pastes quickly.

Step 5: Write your content

Use the editor to write or paste in your content. If you chose the rich text editor, you'll have a formatting toolbar for bold, italic, links, colors, and lists. If you chose the code editor, you can select a programming language for syntax highlighting.

Don't worry about getting it perfect the first time — you can always edit the paste later.

Step 6: Save your paste

Click "Save" and your paste is created. You'll be taken back to the team's paste list where you can see your new paste alongside any others.

Step 7: Copy and use it

To use your paste, just click the copy button next to it. The content is copied to your clipboard and ready to paste into any application — your email client, a chat window, a terminal, or anywhere else. PasteBase logs each copy so you can see how often your pastes are being used.

Tips for your first pastes

Start with the text you find yourself typing or searching for most often. Common first pastes include email signatures, frequently sent replies, meeting agenda templates, or code snippets you look up regularly. Once you have a few pastes saved, you'll quickly see how much time PasteBase saves you.