How to password-protect a note you share

13 November 2026 · JotLink team

A shared note is great for working on something together. But sometimes you want the opposite: a timetable, instructions or an announcement that everyone can read, while only you can change it. In JotLink you do that by locking the note with a password.

What a lock does (and doesn't do)

• Everyone with the link can still read a locked note.
• Only people who know the password can edit it.
• A lock does not hide the text. If the content itself is private, don't share the link with people who shouldn't see it.

Step 1: Write the note

Open a new note and type your text. A note has to contain some text before it can be locked.

Step 2: Lock it

Click Lock, choose a password of at least 6 characters, and confirm. From now on, anyone who opens the link sees the note as read-only, with a small message saying it's locked.

The device you locked it on keeps edit access, so you can carry on typing as before. Your changes are still saved automatically.

Step 3: Edit from another device

On your phone or another computer, open the note's link and click the 🔓 Unlock button. Enter the password, and that device can edit too. It stays unlocked there until you choose Forget on this device.

Removing the lock

On a device that can edit the note, the button shows 🔒 Locked. Click it and choose Remove lock. Anyone with the link can then edit again. To change the password, remove the lock and lock the note again with a new password. Devices that knew the old password lose edit access.

Choosing a good password

• Use a password you don't use anywhere else.
• Longer is better: a few random words are easy to type and hard to guess.
• Write it down somewhere safe. JotLink doesn't know your password (it only stores a scrambled “hash” of it), so a forgotten password can't be recovered or reset.

How it works behind the scenes

For the curious: JotLink never stores the password itself. It stores a salted PBKDF2 hash, which can check a password but can't be turned back into one. Repeated wrong guesses are slowed down by a limit on how many unlock attempts one address can make per minute.