Your first five minutes
Flare gives you a home for screenshots, recordings, files, text, and links on a server you control. Upload something, get a link, and decide who can open it. Your library keeps everything together, with folders, tags, search, and previews when you need them.
This guide is for people using an existing Flare instance. Everyone supplies the starting permissions; additional roles can add capabilities, and administrators can restrict the baseline. A missing navigation item or unavailable action may reflect your current permissions. If you're installing your own, start with the administrator guide.
Join your instance
Open the address your administrator gave you and sign in. Depending on the instance, you may see a registration option, a sign-in button for an identity provider, or only a local email and password form.
- Registration available: create an account, then follow any email-verification instructions.
- Registration closed: ask the administrator for access, or open an invite link if someone sent you one. A public file link does not require an account unless the file's access settings require one.
- Two-factor authentication: after your password, enter your authenticator code or a saved recovery code if you enabled this protection. Set it up.
- Passkeys: choose Sign in with a passkey to use a passkey already registered to your account. Add a passkey.
- Passkey required: password and SSO sign-in are blocked after you explicitly enable this setting. Use your passkey, or Use a passkey recovery code with your email and one dedicated emergency code. Understand the requirement.
- Single sign-on: use the provider offered by your instance. Existing local accounts are not automatically linked to SSO accounts with the same email address.
The name, colors, logo, and background can differ between instances. The tasks and controls described here stay the same.
Upload and share your first file
- Open Upload in the navigation.
- Drop a file into the selection area, or click it to browse your device.
- Open Upload options to change visibility. Choose Public (anyone with the link) to share it with another person, or Private (only me) to keep it in your account; accounts with
content.readalso retain access. Roles without sharing permission upload privately and see Expiration options instead. - Optionally add a password or expiration.
- Start the upload and wait for the completion result.
- Choose Copy link, then send that link to your recipient.
The copied link opens a Flare share page. A password or private setting still applies after copying. For a useful access check, open a public link in a signed-out browser window: your own signed-in session can access files that other people cannot.
Continue with uploading files and sharing and privacy.
Find your way around
Keyboard users can press Tab to reveal Skip to content, then Enter to move past the navigation to the page.
The bar at the top of the dashboard holds your own places: Files, Upload, Paste, and Links. Select your avatar at the right of the bar for the account menu, which has Profile and Sign out. If your roles let you help run the instance, the bar ends with an Admin menu after a thin divider.
| Place | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Files | Search, preview, download, organize, and manage access to uploaded files and pastes. |
| Upload | Queue files and choose the destination, upload profile, visibility, password, and expiration. |
| Paste | Save text or code as a shareable file. |
| Links | Create short redirects under your instance's domain and see their click counts. |
| Profile → Account | Update identity, password, email, appearance, login history, and active sessions. |
| Profile → Uploads | Configure screenshot tools, reusable upload profiles, and account upload defaults. |
| Profile → Integrations | Create scoped API tokens and outgoing webhooks. |
| Profile → Your data | Check storage use, export data, or delete your account. |
| Admin → Users | Manage accounts and their roles. Needs users.read; the Invites tab needs invites.create or invites.manage. |
| Admin → Roles | Create and combine permission groups. Needs roles.manage. |
| Admin → Audit log | Investigate activity across the instance. Needs audit.read. |
| Admin → Settings | Configure the instance. Needs settings.read. |
The Admin menu lists only the pages your roles allow. If they allow just one, that page sits in the bar by itself instead of in a menu, for example Audit log for an account whose only administration permission is audit.read. Without any of these permissions there is no Admin menu. While you are on one of its pages, the Admin button is highlighted and the menu marks the current page. On Profile, a ring around your avatar shows where you are.
The instance name and logo at the start of the bar open Files, or Profile if your roles don't include files.read. A bookmark or link to a page your roles don't allow opens Profile instead.
When the window is too narrow for the bar, choose the menu button next to your avatar. It lists your places, then the administration pages under an Admin heading, then Profile and Sign out under Account. Your avatar still opens the account menu too. With four places or fewer, the full bar shows from 768 pixels wide; with more, including the Admin menu, it shows from 900 pixels.
Earlier versions put every page in the bar, including Profile, Users, Roles, Audit log, and Settings, and showed the menu button to everyone below 1280 pixels. Page addresses haven't changed, so bookmarks such as /dashboard/settings and /dashboard/profile still work.
On touch devices, shared buttons, inputs, selects, and menu rows have larger targets; switches and radio controls keep compact visuals with larger hit areas, and calendar days use a compact seven-column grid while the desktop keeps compact controls. Keyboard focus stays visible, and reduced-motion preferences suppress UI animation.
If a dashboard page cannot load, Try again appears inside the workspace so navigation remains available.
Profile and Settings remember the selected section in the page address, so browser Back and Forward work when moving between sections.
Build a workflow that fits
I share screenshots throughout the day
Create a Public screenshots upload profile, review its defaults, and download a capture-tool configuration from that profile. A capture can upload and copy its share link without opening the dashboard. Add a filename tag rule to collect related captures automatically.
I need a private working library
Create a private upload profile and make it your default. Use folders for projects and tags for topics that cross project boundaries. Private files are accessible to you (with files.read) and accounts with content.read. Making a folder public does not expose its private files.
I send temporary reviews or recordings
Use a profile with public visibility, a relative expiration, and Make private as its expiry action. The public link stops being accessible after the scheduled action runs, while the file remains in your library. Choose Delete file instead if you also want Flare to remove the stored copy.
I want to automate uploads
Start with a generated Bash script. For a custom application, use a named API token with only the permissions it needs. Webhooks notify a receiver when a file is ready.
A few things to know early
An instance is its own service. Accounts, limits, storage, registration, email, and branding belong to that installation. Ask its administrator about availability and backups.
Use a current browser. Flare supports Chrome, Edge, and Firefox 111 or later and Safari 16.4 or later. On an iPhone or iPad every browser uses Safari's engine, so the device needs iOS or iPadOS 16.4 or later. Older browsers aren't supported, and the dashboard and share pages may not work in them, for you or for the people you send links to.
Public means accessible by link. Treat the link as something recipients can forward. A folder share can also list public files placed directly in that folder.
Private and password-protected are different. A password on a public file lets another person unlock it. A password on a private file does not give other people access.
Defaults affect future uploads. Changing a profile, default expiration, or URL-naming choice does not rewrite files already uploaded.
Deletion is permanent in Flare. Download or export anything you need before deleting a file or account. There is no user-facing trash or undo flow.
Error messages give Flare's reason. When Flare refuses a change, such as a save, upload, or delete, the message says why, such as Permission denied or File not found. If a proxy or sign-in gateway in front of Flare answers with its own page instead, you see the screen's usual message, such as Couldn’t update folders. Please try again.; earlier versions showed a script error such as Unexpected token '<' in folder and tag dialogs, Profile → Integrations, and your appearance preference. Ask the operator if such messages keep appearing.