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Hand someone a passage or a whole article, and decide what shows up on a public reading profile.

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Share a passage

Highlight something, open the share popover, and you get a short link. It carries the quote, any note you attached, a little of the text on either side for context, and where it came from. Anyone who opens the link sees the passage in a readable page — no account, no sign-in.

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Share the whole article

From the reader’s share dialog you can publish a snapshot: the article as smry cleaned it, at its own short link. This is the one to send when the other person would hit the same paywall or the same broken page you did. Snapshots work for signed-out readers too. You do not need an account to make one.

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Two things to know before you publish

Both of these are real, and both are easier to know now than to discover later.
A shared article snapshot cannot be taken back. There is no delete for a snapshot — not in the app, and not anywhere in smry. Hiding it from your profile does not break the link; the two controls are separate, and unlisting only changes what is listed. Once a snapshot link exists, treat it as permanent and public to anyone holding it.Shared passages are different: if you were signed in when you created one, you can revoke it. A passage shared while signed out has no owner, so nothing can revoke it either.
Publishing to your profile creates a public handle from your account name. If you have not claimed a handle, smry derives one from your username, or your full name, or your first name — and copies your display name and profile picture onto the public page. So ticking “Show on my profile” on a single highlight can put your real name on the open web under a handle you never chose.If that is not what you want, claim the handle you do want first, in Settings → Account → Public profile, before you publish anything.

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The two levels, plainly

The distinction is worth internalising: unlisted does not mean private. It means no one is handed the address. Once it has been forwarded, posted, or pasted into a group chat, it is readable by everyone who sees it, for as long as it exists. Only the second level requires an explicit opt-in, and each opt-in is per item. Nothing you save is published by saving it.

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Your public profile

You do not have one until you publish something. A fresh account has no profile page at all — the address simply does not resolve. Publish for the first time, from any of three places, and the page comes into being:
1

Claim a handle

Settings → Account → Public profile. Doing this first is what keeps your handle from being derived for you.
2

Publish an article

“Show on my profile” in the share dialog of a snapshot you own.
3

Publish a note or highlight

“Show on my profile” in the share popover of a memo you own.
The page shows your handle, display name and picture, up to fifty published articles, and up to fifty public notes. It shows nothing else — no library, no reading history, no counts, no saved items. What is not published is not there. One edge to be aware of: a profile that exists but has nothing published still renders publicly, with your handle, name and picture on it. It stays out of search engines while empty, and becomes indexable once you publish anything. Rename your handle and the old one keeps working forever, redirecting to the new one. Old links you have already sent do not break — and equally, an old handle never stops pointing at you.

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Questions

No. Snapshots have no delete, and removing one from your profile does not invalidate its URL. Share one only when you are content for it to stay reachable.
Yes, if you were signed in when you shared it. One shared while signed out has no owner and cannot be revoked.
Once you publish at least one thing, yes — profiles are indexable. An empty profile is not.
No. Your library is private. Publication only ever happens through an explicit share or an explicit “Show on my profile”.
Not unless you published it. Reading history, saved items and notes are never exposed on a profile.

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Next

Highlights and notes

What you are sharing when you share a passage.

Your library

The private side — everything that is not published.

Connect an agent

Give a client access to your own library, not the public one.
Last modified on September 13, 2026