Publishing a note
to the web.
Turn a single note into a private, shareable web page. This guide covers publishing, republishing, and unpublishing, the secret-link model, link expiry, and managing everything you’ve shared.
Publish, update,
and take back down
Every step is one action from the command palette (Cmd + K), the File menu, or the document toolbar.
Publish
Open the command palette (Cmd + K) and run “Publish to web”, use File → Publish, or click the share button in the document toolbar. Ampersand uploads a self-contained snapshot and copies the link.
Share the link
The secret URL is on your clipboard. Anyone you send it to can open the page in any browser — no account, no app, nothing to install.
Republish
After you edit the note, run “Republish (update link)” to push the changes to the same URL. Publishing is manual, so your edits stay private until you choose to update.
Unpublish
Run “Unpublish” from the palette, the toolbar, or the sidebar to take the link down. The page is removed and the URL returns a friendly “not found”.
The link is
the access key
When you publish, Ampersand uploads a self-contained snapshot of that one note — images and math inlined, styles baked in, no scripts — and returns a link like ampersand.page/7xKq…9fA. The identifier is a long random value, so the link is unguessable, and published pages are always kept out of search engines.
There are no accounts and no logins: possession of the link is access. Treat it like a key — anyone you send it to, and anyone they forward it to, can read the page. Only the note you explicitly publish leaves your machine; the rest of your vault is never uploaded. Because a published link is a normal web request, its unguessable identifier may appear in standard server access logs used to run and protect the service, as described in our privacy policy and acceptable use policy.
Publishing is manual. Editing a published note changes nothing online until you republish, so your draft stays private; a subtle hint in the toolbar shows when a published page is behind your current edits.
Tune how a page
behaves
Open the publish options to set these per note — a one-click publish uses the safe defaults.
Who can view
By default the link itself is the key — anyone who has it can read the note. You can also put it behind a password you share separately, or behind a list of people: name the email addresses (or a company domain) allowed to open it, and each reader gets a one-time code by email. A forwarded link is useless to anyone not on the list.
Expiry
Links expire after 90 days by default — direct sharing, not permanent hosting. Choose 7 or 30 days, or “never” for a link you’ll reference indefinitely. Once expired, the page returns a friendly “this note has expired”.
Manage what you’ve shared
The published-notes manager lists every live link, when each expires, and lets you copy, open, change the expiry, or take any of them down — including a note whose file you’ve since deleted.
Your note, verbatim
The page is your note’s content exactly — no injected heading or chrome. The note’s title appears only in the browser tab and link previews.
Encrypted notes
Free vs Pro
Good to know
Where does the published page live?
At ampersand.page, on an address containing a long random identifier. The identifier is the access key: the link is unguessable and never indexed by search engines. Anyone you share the link with can read the page.
Can other people edit my published note?
No. A published page is a read-only snapshot. It has no scripts and no editing surface — it’s a static copy of the note as it was when you last published.
What about links, tags, and mentions inside the note?
They render as plain, readable text on the published page. Wiki-links, tags, and @-mentions point at things inside your vault, which isn’t published, so they’re flattened rather than linked.
Do I need to keep Ampersand open for the link to work?
No. Once published, the page is hosted independently — your Mac can be asleep or offline. The link keeps working until you unpublish it or it expires.
Is a password-protected page encrypted?
No — and the difference matters. A locked note in your vault is encrypted on disk, and we could never read it. A published page is stored on our server in readable form; a password or an allowlist controls who we serve it to, not whether we could read it. Restricting a link is access control, not end-to-end encryption. If a document is sensitive enough that this distinction matters, keep it in your vault and share it another way.
What happens to the email addresses I list?
They are stored with the note so we know who may request a code, and used for nothing else — no mailing list, no product email, no sharing. They are deleted when you unpublish the note, switch it back to a password or a plain link, or when the link expires. Removing someone from the list revokes their access immediately, even if they are already reading.
Can I see who opened my note?
No. Ampersand does not report back who read a published note or when — not for plain links, and not for the email allowlist. The codes exist to keep the wrong people out, not to tell you about the right ones.
Ready to share
your first note?
Download Ampersand, write in plain markdown, and publish a note to a link you can send to anyone.
Free to start · macOS 13+ · No account required