Update a share without changing its link
Re-publish a share to the same link, compare and restore older versions, and see what an already-open tab does when it changes.
Once you've sent a link to someone, you're stuck with what it says, or you used to be. Publishing again made a different URL, so everyone holding the old one kept seeing the old content. Version History fixes that.
Update a live link#
Select a share in the Shares view and you'll find a History card under the edit form.
Update content: re-reads the original file and re-publishes it to the same URL. The link doesn't change, and neither does its expiry: a link set to die in 7 days still dies in 7 days. The button appears only when the share came from a file (something published from pasted text has no original to re-read).
Compare: the small icon on any row diffs that version against the one below it, line by line: additions in green, removals in red. Images, PDFs and videos can't be diffed as text, so those just tell you whether the content is identical and how the size changed.
Restore: puts an older version back on the same URL. It's recorded as a new version ("Restored from r3"), so rolling back never erases what you rolled back from. You can always roll forward again.
Old versions don't pile up forever. Yardmaster keeps the last 10 versions per share, skips anything over 5 MB, and clears the oldest copies once the total passes 500 MB.
When a copy is cleared the row stays: you keep the timeline even when you lose the ability to roll back to that particular point. Those rows say why: "too large to keep" or "cleared to save space."
What does an already-open tab do?#
Somebody opens your link and leaves the tab sitting there for the rest of the afternoon. That page now checks in with the server about once a minute (only while the tab is actually on screen), so it doesn't go stale behind their back. What happens next depends on what changed:
You took the share away: you revoked it, it expired, you deleted it, or you put a password on it. The open tab reloads itself right away and shows the ordinary "this share is no longer available" page. Nobody carries on reading something you pulled.
You changed what the link serves: you pressed Update content or Restore. A small pill appears in the corner: "This share has been updated." with a Reload button and an × to dismiss it. Nothing changes until the reader decides.
The pill means the bytes changed, never that you edited a setting. Renaming a share, changing its subtitle, or extending its expiry raises nothing, because there is no new version to offer. Dismissing the pill isn't permanent either: it stays gone for that version, and comes back only if you publish a further update.
Reaching the view cap is the one thing that doesn't close the tab. A view is spent the moment the page opens, so on a one-view link the reader's own visit is what reaches the cap. Reloading them out a minute later would turn a read-once link into a read-for-a-minute link, and it would eject the one person who actually paid for that view.
The cap decides who gets in, and they're already in: the next person still gets the "view cap reached" page. That tab does carry on checking, so if you revoke or expire the share afterwards, it still closes behind them.
It never counts as a view. The check runs the same access rules the page does, but it is explicitly not a page load: it can't move your view count, burn a view cap, show up in the view log, or fire a "share viewed" notification. Someone who leaves a tab open all day doesn't inflate your numbers.
A tab that isn't on screen stops checking altogether; bring it back after a while and it checks straight away, bring it back after a few seconds and it simply finishes out the minute it was already waiting, so flicking between tabs doesn't fire off a check each time.
If the check ever fails (no network, a server hiccup, an old browser), the page is left exactly as it was. The pill is hidden when the page is printed.
Let a new version swap itself in#
Some pages change all the time, like a dashboard that gets rebuilt every few minutes. Asking readers to press Reload after every rebuild gets old fast.
For an HTML, Kit or Markdown share you can turn on Auto-refresh: select the share in Shares and flip the Auto-refresh switch in its detail pane. It is off by default, takes effect on the reader's next check, and needs no republish. An agent can turn it on for you, too.
New versions swap in place. An open tab checks about every 30 seconds (still only while it is on screen) and, when you publish a new version, swaps it in instead of showing the pill. The reader stays where they were on the page.
A small "Updated" chip (for example Updated 2:45) appears in the corner afterwards, so the reader knows the page changed.
Typing is never interrupted. If the reader is typing in a box on the page, or typed in the last few seconds, the swap waits until they stop. Anything the page saves (checklists, notes, poll answers) comes back after the swap.
Taking a share away works the same as always. Revoking, expiring or password-protecting the share still closes open tabs straight away.
Auto-refresh isn't offered on conversations, PDFs, images, games or combined shares, because those pages can't swap a new version in safely.
Related
- Get alerts from your agentsAn agent can leave a note in your Inbox that stays until you deal with it: a heads-up, a link, a file or a report.
- Back up everything to a folderBackup Mirror keeps an encrypted copy of all your Yardmaster data in a folder you choose, such as a Dropbox or OneDrive folder, so a broken or new computer loses nothing.
- Share a conversation as a linkTurn an AI session, one message or a highlighted part into a read-only web page anyone can open.