Help Center › Sharing & Access › Read-only access

Read-only access

Not everyone who needs access to your pastes should be able to edit them. PasteBase provides two ways to give people read-only access to your paste collection: the Member role for team members, and shareable links for anyone outside your team. Both options let people view and copy pastes without the ability to change anything.

The Member role

When you invite someone to your team with the Member role, they get a logged-in, read-only experience. Members can:

• See the full list of pastes in the team
• Open and read any paste
• Copy paste content to their clipboard with one click
• Filter pastes by category

Members cannot create new pastes, edit existing ones, delete anything, or access team settings. This makes the Member role perfect for people who consume your paste content — like support agents using canned responses, or new team members who need reference materials.

Shareable links

If you need to give someone read-only access without requiring them to create a PasteBase account, shareable links are the way to go. A shareable link provides an anonymous, read-only view of your team's pastes. Anyone with the link can browse and copy — no login needed.

The trade-off is less control: you can't track who specifically accessed the link, and anyone who has the URL can view your pastes. For more controlled access, the Member role is the better choice.

Choosing between Member role and shareable links

Use the Member role when:

• The person is a regular part of your team or organization
• You want to track who's accessing the pastes
• You need the ability to revoke an individual's access
• The person already has (or should have) a PasteBase account

Use a shareable link when:

• You're sharing with people outside your organization
• You want quick, frictionless access without requiring account creation
• The content isn't sensitive and broad access is acceptable
• You need a URL you can post in documentation, a wiki, or a chat channel

What read-only users see

Whether someone accesses your pastes through the Member role or a shareable link, the experience is focused and distraction-free. They see your pastes organized by category with clear titles, and each paste has a prominent copy button. There are no edit controls, settings menus, or member lists — just the content they need and a way to copy it.

This clean interface means less confusion for read-only users. They don't need to learn how PasteBase works or understand features they can't use. They just find the paste they need and copy it.