Magic links, now for any recording

When we shipped private recordings, they came with a magic link: a long, unguessable URL you can hand to someone outside your team. Anyone holding the link can watch, no account, no sign-in. The link is the key.

The catch was that magic links only worked on private recordings. If a video was team-visible and one outside person needed to see it, you had two options: publish it, or flip it to private first. Both felt like more ceremony than the job deserved.

So we've untied the two. Any recording in your library can now have a magic link, team-visible or private.

Publishing is more than you sometimes need

Publishing is the full treatment. Your video gets transcoded into streaming formats and quality levels, a public page, your player branding, analytics. When a video is going in front of prospects or customers, or you want it to stream beautifully on any device, that's exactly what you want.

But a lot of sharing isn't that. A contractor needs to see one walkthrough. A client is waiting on a fix and just needs to watch you confirm it. An external examiner needs a single lecture recording. Transcoding a video into multiple formats so one person can watch it once is more than the job needs.

A magic link skips all of it. The recording stays exactly as it is in your library (no transcoding, no public page) and the person on the other end just opens the link and watches.

Where you'll find it

Three places, depending on where you are when you need it.

In your library. The menu on any recording you own now has Copy magic link, Copy thumbnail, and Copy magic link & thumbnail. It's the same trio published recordings get, just pointing at the magic link instead. If the recording doesn't have a link yet, we ask before creating one, so a stray click never opens anything up.

On the recording's Share tab. Same as before: create the link, copy it, generate a fresh one, or turn it off. It's just no longer only for private recordings.

On the save screen, right after you record. There's now a "Create magic link on save" switch next to the Team and Private options. Flip it on, save to cloud, and the buttons at the bottom become Copy magic link and Copy magic link & thumbnail. Record, save, paste the link into the conversation you were already having. That's the whole workflow.

Still yours to control

Nothing has changed about who's in charge. Creating a link is owner-only. You can generate a fresh link, which kills the old one immediately, or turn it off, which leaves no working link at all.

One behaviour has changed, and it's worth saying plainly: a magic link used to turn off when you switched a recording back to Team. It doesn't anymore. The link and the library visibility are now separate things. Switch between Team and Private as much as you like and the link keeps working. The one thing that does turn a link off is publishing, because a published video already has a public page, and two front doors to the same video is one too many.

And the honest trade hasn't changed either: anyone holding the link can watch. Treat the link like a key.

The short version

Publish when a video deserves the full treatment. For everything else, the one-viewer, watch-it-once, outside-the-team moments, any recording can now carry a magic link... and you can copy it from the library, the Share tab, or the save screen the moment you stop recording.

Until next time!

Wouter
Founder