Who can open a link

Every share link carries one of three access modes, chosen with the three buttons in the middle of the share panel. New links start on Sign-in unless you have saved a different default, and you can change the mode on a link you already sent without the link changing.

Anyone with the link#

The page opens for whoever loads it, with no account and no sign-in. This is what most people mean by a share link, and it is the right choice more often than not. Remember what it implies: a forwarded link works, a link pasted into a group chat works, and a link that ends up in a search engine works. A password still applies if you set one.

Only signed-in Nemi users#

Anyone with a Nemi account can open it, but a stranger who does not have one cannot. A visitor without a session gets a page that says Sign in required, with a button that brings them back to your link after they have signed in. Making an account is free, so this is a speed bump rather than a wall: it is meant to make casual forwarding stop working, not to identify people.

Only approved addresses#

You list email addresses, or @usernames if sharing by username has been switched on for your account, and only those accounts get in. Anybody else, signed in or not, sees a page that says Access not allowed.

• The list is never shown. The page tells a visitor to sign in with the account they were approved with, and nothing more. Your other clients' addresses do not leak to whoever opens the link.
• People you email the link to count as approved. If you type addresses into the recipients field and choose Approved, those addresses are added to the list for you.
• It is an account check, not an inbox check. The visitor has to be signed in to Nemi as that address. Forwarding the email to a colleague does not give the colleague access, which is the point.
• An empty list is refused. Nemi will not create an Approved link with nobody on it.

How a password fits in#

A password is not one of the three modes, it is an extra layer on top of whichever mode you picked. Anyone plus a password is the classic "send the link in an email, the password over WhatsApp" arrangement, and it is a real improvement over Anyone alone because the two halves travel separately. Approved plus a password is belt and braces, and worth it for genuinely sensitive material. Setting one is covered in Passwords, expiry and download limits.

When somebody cannot get in#

Ask which of the two pages they saw. Sign in required means the mode is Sign-in or Approved and they have no session. Access not allowed means they are signed in as an account that is not on your list, which is almost always because their Nemi account uses a different address from the one you typed. They can add that second address to their existing account under Settings, Security, rather than making a new one.