A couple weeks ago, I was sitting next to a friend. I wanted to send them a link. Simple ask, right?

No Airdrop. No WhatsApp logged in. No iMessage because, well, Windows. It was like trying to pass a note in class but the teacher confiscated all the paper.

That’s when it clicked. Why isn’t there a clean, no-signup, no-install way to just paste a link and show it instantly on another device?

I checked. There wasn’t. So I built one.

It’s called LinkShare.live. You and your friend open the same room. You paste the link. They see it. Done. No login, no syncing, no email-yourself gymnastics.

The Scope Was the Feature

I wasn’t interested in building Yet Another Productivity App™. I wanted a tool that did one thing really well: share links across devices with zero friction.

No chat UI. No file history. Not even clipboard syncing. Just paste, show, close tab, forget.

It took a few hours to design and a couple evenings to build. I used Bolt to handle the backend and kept the UI simple: one input, one drop, real-time update. The kind of interface that explains itself without saying a word.

How the Design Evolved

Designing it was more about removing things than adding. I kept iterating live. Early version had too much spacing, the new one has just enough air. I wrote small Figma prompts for myself like:

• “Would this confuse your non-techy cousin?”

• “Can someone land and drop a link in <5 seconds?”

Only when it passed those did I ship it.

Even micro details mattered. The link text field? Limited to 400 characters. No one needs to paste an entire essay. You drop a link. That’s the job.

Tiny Decisions That Made It Work

Originally, I used random alphanumeric strings for room codes. But they were hard to communicate if you're saying them out loud. So I switched to 4-digit numeric codes, like OTPs. Easier to share, type, or read aloud.

If you're on your laptop and want to open it on your phone, there's a QR code option. Tap it, scan it, and boom — same room, same link. No dancing between apps.

Behind the scenes, it uses a unique hash in the URL to differentiate rooms. Nothing gets stored server-side. You drop something, it lives on that route for 10 minutes, and then it’s gone. That keeps things fast, private, and cheap to run.

Handling the Edge Cases

Turns out, there are a surprising number of weird corner cases in something so small.

• People opening on phone but don’t have camera access? They can enter the 4-digit code manually.

• Users accidentally closing the tab? The drop stays in local storage for 10 minutes, so you can revisit or re-copy if needed.

• Want to share another link after dropping one? I added a new drop button and an edit option — subtle but important.

• Didn’t copy the link in time? Use the Retrieve Another option in the same room, if it’s still active.

No one asked for these directly. But I knew they’d be the annoying parts if I didn’t account for them.

The Launch (aka "Let’s Just See What Happens")

I shot a simple launch video. Just screen recording, no dramatic background music or AI narrators. I spoke to the mic like I was explaining it to a friend.

Posted it on Reddit, Product Hunt, and my personal Twitter.

Reddit was the wild card. I dropped it in a few relevant subreddits with zero expectations. People found it genuinely useful. Someone even said, “Why does this not exist already?” — which is my favorite kind of compliment.

Product Hunt brought some attention too. It wasn’t a "Product of the Day" kind of launch, but enough to bring new users in.

Twitter brought a steady trickle. Not viral, but consistent. A few bookmarks, a few replies, a few curious DMs.

I'll update numbers soon, but safe to say — people are using it. And that alone makes it worth it.

Would I Build It Again?

Yes. In a heartbeat.

Not because it’s complex. Not because it’s revolutionary. But because it solved something dumb that was quietly annoying a lot of people.

And that’s what good tools do. They don’t announce themselves. They just show up, work, and disappear.

So if you ever find yourself in that annoying moment — when you just want to send one link to one person and everything else is somehow too much — now you have something for that.

It’s called LinkShare.live.

That’s it. That’s the blog.