How to Publish Snippets
Overview
Publishing a Snippet creates a shareable link that anyone can open, with no TextExpander account and no sign in required. The link opens a page showing the Snippet’s name, abbreviation, and content, along with a button to add it to a TextExpander library.
Publishing is opt-in. A Snippet stays private until it’s deliberately published.
Use it to share a Snippet in a community post, a blog article, a help doc, or a message to someone outside your Organization. On platforms that support rich previews, the link expands into a preview card with the Snippet content and an “Add to TextExpander” button.
Publish Snippets is available on every TextExpander plan. In Organization accounts, an Organization Admin controls whether the feature is available to members.
What to know before you publish
Published Snippets are public. Review the content before you publish, and keep these points in mind:
- Anyone with the link can see the Snippet. There’s no sign in, no password, and no way to restrict who opens it.
- Your name appears on the published page and on the preview card. Publishing attributes the Snippet to you.
- The page is built to be found. Published Snippet pages are readable by search engines and AI crawlers.
- Other platforms keep a copy of the preview. Slack, LinkedIn, Discourse, and similar services may cache the preview card after the link is first pasted.
- Recipients can copy the Snippet into their own library. That copy belongs to them and stays with them.
- Unpublishing stops TextExpander from serving the Snippet, but it can’t reach what’s already out there. Cached previews and copies that recipients have already added remain.
Keep customer records, patient information, credentials, internal pricing, and anything else confidential out of published Snippets. For guidance on Snippets that touch protected health information, see Best Practices for TextExpander and HIPAA / Medical / Personal Info.
If the Snippet belongs to your Organization’s shared library, confirm you’re authorized to share that content outside the Organization before you publish it.
How published Snippets stay current
A shareable link points to the live Snippet, not a copy taken at the moment you published.
Edit the Snippet and the published page updates on its own. There’s no republishing step. The published page and any preview cards are cached, so a change can take some time to appear. To force a preview card to catch up, use the refresh control on the card.
If the Snippet is deleted, or the account that published it is closed, the page and any preview cards show a message that the Snippet is no longer available.
Who can publish
Publishing and unpublishing a Snippet requires Organization Admin access, or Can manage access to the Snippet Group it belongs to. Members with lower access levels won’t see the Publish control.
Organization Admins can also revoke any shareable link in the Organization, whether or not they have access to the Snippet.
How to publish a Snippet
- Sign in at app.textexpander.com.
- Open the Snippet you want to publish.
- In the Snippet editor header, select Publish.
- Review the warning about publishing content, then select Publish.
- Copy the shareable link to your clipboard. Paste it wherever you want to share it.
The modal stays open after publishing so you can review the preview card and copy the link again. Reopen it any time by selecting Published in the editor header.
How to unpublish a Snippet
- Sign in at app.textexpander.com.
- Open the published Snippet.
- In the Snippet editor header, select Published.
- Select Unpublish.
The page and any preview cards change to a message that the Snippet is no longer available.
Unpublishing doesn’t affect the Snippet itself. It stays in your library and keeps working as usual.
Publishing the same Snippet again creates a brand new link. The earlier link never comes back, so anyone who saved or posted it will need the new one.
Where the link shows a preview card
Some platforms render a full preview card with the Snippet content and an “Add to TextExpander” button. These cards use oEmbed, an open standard that lets a website request an embeddable version of a link. Support for oEmbed is uneven, so the card renders on a small number of platforms today. Everywhere else, the link shows a standard preview: an image, title, and description, without the interactive card.
The link works everywhere. Only the preview treatment changes.
| Where the link is pasted | What appears |
| TextExpander Community | Full preview card |
| Discourse forums | Full preview card |
| Slack | Standard preview |
| Social media, including X, LinkedIn, and Facebook | Standard preview |
| Anywhere else | Standard preview, or a plain link on platforms that don’t generate previews |
We’re working on full preview card support for more platforms. If there’s one you’d like to see, submit an idea.
What someone sees when they open the link
The public page shows:
- The Snippet name and abbreviation
- The Snippet content, including Fill-ins shown as inline placeholders
- The name of the person who published it
- A button to add the Snippet to a TextExpander library
- A button to copy the content of the Snippet
- A prompt to start a free trial, for visitors without an account
Someone who’s already signed in selects Add to TextExpander, chooses a Snippet Group, and the Snippet lands in their library. Someone without an account signs up first, then the Snippet is added once they’re in.
The copy they get is their own. Later edits to your Snippet don’t change it.
If the added Snippet uses an abbreviation that already exists in the recipient’s library, the two Snippets conflict and neither one may expand reliably. Change the abbreviation on the new Snippet to resolve it. See Conflicting Snippet Abbreviations.
Turn publishing on or off for an Organization
Organization Admins control whether members can publish Snippets.
The setting is off for Organizations created before August 2026, and on for Organizations created after. Individual accounts have publishing available by default and don’t have an account-wide setting.
To change the setting:
- Sign in at app.textexpander.com as an Organization Admin.
- Go to Organization settings.
- Find Publish snippets to the web and switch the setting on or off.
When the setting is off, the Publish control doesn’t appear for members, and no one in the Organization can publish Snippets.
Turning the setting off doesn’t automatically stop links that are already published. When you turn it off, the confirmation shows how many Snippets are currently published and offers to revoke all of those links at the same time.
Revoking is permanent. Turning the setting back on won’t restore revoked links, and each Snippet has to be published again to get a new link.
How to revoke a shareable link from Organization settings
Organization settings list every Snippet published by anyone in the Organization, including Snippets the Admin doesn’t otherwise have access to. Revoke links individually or all at once.
- Sign in at app.textexpander.com as an Organization Admin.
- Go to Organization settings.
- Open the list of published Snippet links under Publish snippets to the web.
- Select the links you want to revoke, then confirm.
Revoked links stop working right away and can’t be restored. The Snippet owner can publish the Snippet again, which creates a new link at a new address.
This list is the only place to revoke links in bulk. Individual accounts unpublish one Snippet at a time from the Snippet editor.
Frequently asked questions
Can I publish an entire Snippet Group?
To share a whole group, use Public Snippet Group sharing. See Sharing Snippet Groups With A URL.
If I add a Snippet to my library from a card, does it update when the publisher edits it?
No. Adding a Snippet copies the content as it exists at that moment. The copy is yours to edit, and later changes by the publisher don’t reach it.
Can I enable publishing for only certain members or Teams?
Not at this time. The setting applies to the whole Organization. If that’s something you need, submit an idea.
Can I see how many people added my published Snippet?
Not at this time. If that’s something you would like, submit an idea.
How do I tell whether a Snippet is published?
Open the Snippet in the web app at app.textexpander.com and look at the editor header. It reads Published when a shareable link exists, and Publish when it doesn’t. Organization Admins can see every published Snippet in the Organization in one list under Publish snippets to the web in Organization settings.
Additional details
- Shareable links live at share.textexpander.com and stay active as long as the Snippet stays published.
- Publishing is available only in the web app at app.textexpander.com.
- TextExpander doesn’t review or endorse published Snippet content. Please do not include copyrighted material that you or your Organization do not own.