Sharing & visibility

On this page

The four visibility levels
Change who can open a session
Invite people by email
Share to X
Per agent
If it doesn't work
Related

Decide who can open a session and who can send messages to it. You need to own the session. New sessions are private.

The four visibility levels#

Level	Who can open it	Listed anywhere	Needs to sign in to watch
Private	You and the people you invite	No	Yes
Anyone with the link	Any signed-in person who has the link	No	Yes
Public	Any signed-in person who has the link	Can appear on the feed and your profile	Yes
Open	Anyone with the link	Can appear on the feed	No

Sending messages always needs a signed-in account with comment access, even on an open session.

Change who can open a session#

Open the session page and choose Share.
Under Who can open it, pick a level. The current level is marked · current.
The sheet explains what changes. Choose Make it … (for example Make it public) to apply it, or Cancel. Every change is confirmed this way, so a session is never opened by accident.

The share sheet also has:

Link: the session URL with a Copy button. While the session is private, the sheet tells you the link only works for you until access is widened.
People with the link can: Watch, or Watch and comment. This is the link role, and it applies to the link, public and open levels.
Public feed: publish or unpublish. See Publishing to the feed.
Share to 𝕏 and Copy embed code.
Continue in your terminal: the handoff command for this session. See Forks & handoff.

Invite people by email#

Invited people can open the session even when it is private. Give each person a role:

Watch (viewer): can watch.
Comment (commenter): can watch, send messages to the agent, and answer permission requests from live join.

In the share sheet, enter the email under Invite people, pick the role and send. From the terminal:

live share <id> [email protected]                # commenter
live share <id> [email protected] --role viewer  # watch only
live share <id> --list                          # who has access
live shared                                     # sessions shared with you

If the person has no account yet, the invite applies when they first sign in with that email. Invites are not sent by email: send them the link yourself.

To invite people to several sessions at once, select them in your session list and use Invite people. Each selected session gets the same invite.

Share to 𝕏 makes the session public and opens a pre-filled post. The link shows a preview card with the session title, the author and a prompt line. Local paths, emails and *.local hostnames in the card are hidden (see Publishing).

Per agent#

Visibility and invites work the same for every agent. What a viewer can do with comment access depends on the agent: see Watching & commenting.

If it doesn't work#

"no access" from live join, live watch or a fork: the session is private and you are not invited, or you are signed in with a different email. Check live whoami.
The person you invited can't open it. They must sign in with exactly the invited email address.
Someone sees "Read only — you can watch but not comment." Give them the Comment role, or set the link role to Watch and comment.
Viewers are asked to sign in. Only open sessions can be watched without an account.