Single-Use Share Links

The scenario

You want a link that closes itself after the first person clicks it. The first click delivers the content; from then on, everyone else lands somewhere else. No timer to set, no manual revocation — the click itself is the cutoff.

A few things this is good for:

A work-in-progress draft you want one person's eyes on
An embargoed preview for a journalist or partner
A one-shot invitation to a private slot

How to set it up

1. Create a Redirect by Click Count link

Go to the Redirect by Click Count tool and configure two destinations:

Click 1 → the draft, preview, or sneak peek
Default → wherever you'd like later visitors to land — your homepage, a blog post, a contact page, anything you control

The first click goes through to the content. From the second click onward, everyone lands on the default destination. The link itself is still valid — it just stops pointing anywhere interesting.

Redirect by Click Count

Specify where users should be redirected to depending on the number of clicks on your link.

First

click(s)

All remaining clicks

Create Link

2. Send it once

Send the link to the recipient. As soon as they click, the next click — yours, theirs, anyone the message gets forwarded to — sees the default destination instead of the content.

Watch out for link previews: Slack, iMessage, and some email clients fetch the destination URL to generate a preview, which counts as the first click. The recipient will then see the default destination instead of the real content. Workarounds: set the threshold to 2 (so the preview burns one click and the recipient burns the second), or send the link as plain text inside a code block.

What you get

One read, then closed — The redirect stops happening after the first click. No timer to set, no manual revocation.
No new tool to install — Same short link as everything else, just with a cutoff.
A timestamp of when it was opened — Analytics show exactly when the click happened, which doubles as a quiet read receipt.
Discourages forwarding — A link that only works once is naturally hostile to being copied into a group chat.

Keep in mind: The click count controls the redirect, not what happens after. Once the recipient lands on the destination, they can screenshot it, save the page, or copy the URL — at which point the content is out of your hands. Treat single-use links as a soft cutoff that discourages casual forwarding, not as a guarantee that the content can only ever be seen once.

Variations

A few reads instead of one

Some shares need to reach a small group — not just one person. Set the threshold to 5 instead of 1 and the link works for the first 5 clicks before closing.

Combine with a deadline

Stack a Redirect by Date & Time link if you want both N clicks and N hours as cutoff conditions. Whichever runs out first closes the link.

When you want a specific recipient instead

If your goal is more about who opens the content than how many times it can be opened, a password-protected link is a better fit. Share the password through a separate channel and only the intended recipient can get through — no matter how often the link gets clicked.