Encrypted paste sharing for links that should expire.
Use textdrop.sh when a Gist is too permanent, too public, or too tied to your GitHub account. Share encrypted snippets with expiry, passwords, and burn-after-read.
Encrypted by default
AES-256-GCM in your browser. Password pastes are zero-knowledge.
No ads. No captchas.
Just paste and share. No accounts, no walls.
No paywalled features
Markdown, burn-after-read, syntax highlighting, expiry — all free.
GitHub Gist is the right tool for public code snippets you want indexed and discovered. It's the wrong tool for sensitive one-time sharing: no client-side encryption, secret gists are unlisted rather than access-controlled, and there is no documented built-in expiry or burn-after-read. It also requires a GitHub account to create gists. textdrop.sh handles the use cases Gist doesn't: encrypted pastes, one-time secrets, time-limited snippets, and links that are not tied to a GitHub account.
Are GitHub Gists private?+
No. GitHub has two gist visibility settings: 'public' (indexed, searchable) and 'secret' (unlisted but accessible to anyone with the URL). Neither option provides client-side end-to-end encryption for gist content. textdrop.sh password-protected pastes are AES-256-GCM encrypted in your browser, making them genuinely private even from the server operator.
Does GitHub Gist encrypt content?+
GitHub Gist does not document client-side or end-to-end encryption for gist content. GitHub can serve raw gist content and may automatically scan secret gists for partner secrets. textdrop.sh encrypts every paste with AES-256-GCM before it leaves your browser; password-protected pastes keep the raw key and password out of the server request.
Can I use GitHub Gist without an account?+
No. Creating gists requires a GitHub account. Anonymous gist creation was removed in 2018. textdrop.sh requires no account, no email, and no sign-up of any kind.
Does GitHub Gist have paste expiry or burn-after-read?+
GitHub does not document a built-in expiry option for gists, and there is no burn-after-read feature for one-time secrets. textdrop.sh supports expiry from 1 hour to 30 days and atomic burn-after-read that deletes the paste the moment it's first read.
Is textdrop.sh a good GitHub Gist alternative?+
textdrop.sh is the best Gist alternative for private sharing. If you need client-side encryption, paste expiry, burn-after-read, or anonymous sharing, textdrop.sh covers all of those. Gist remains the better choice for public, version-controlled, embeddable code snippets tied to your GitHub profile.
