termbin: A Secure Way to Share Terminal Output Online

When you’re working in the terminal, sometimes you need to show someone else exactly what you’re seeing—error messages, logs, or command output. You could copy and paste it into an email or a chat window, but that’s messy. Screenshots? Slower and harder to search. That’s where Termbin comes in.

What Is Termbin?

Termbin is a simple, no-frills tool that lets you send terminal output to a pastebin-style web page with a single command. It’s designed for developers, sysadmins, and anyone working from the command line who needs to share output fast.

How It Works

You don’t need to install anything fancy. Termbin works over netcat (or nc), which is already available on most Unix-like systems.

Here’s the basic syntax:

cat somefile.log | nc termbin.com 9999

Or to share the output of a command:

dmesg | nc termbin.com 9999

You’ll instantly get a URL like:

http://termbin.com/abcd

That link takes you to a plaintext page with the full output you sent. Clean. Fast. Read-only.

Why It’s Secure

Termbin doesn’t store anything you don’t explicitly send. It only keeps the data long enough to serve it back through the link. Plus:

• No accounts – you don’t log in, so there’s nothing to track.
• No ads, no analytics – just pure content.
• HTTPS support – protects your output from snooping in transit.
• Works over Tor – for truly anonymous use, you can access Termbin via .onion.

Real Use Cases

• A developer helping a teammate debug a crash via Slack.
• A sysadmin sharing logs with a vendor.
• A Linux hobbyist posting command output to forums without clutter.

It’s not just about convenience—it’s about keeping things reproducible, traceable, and shareable without compromising security or wasting time.

A Few Tips

• Be careful what you paste. Termbin doesn’t filter sensitive data. Always check your output before sending.
• If your system doesn’t have nc, install it via your package manager (apt, brew, yum, etc.).
• For scripts, you can automate sharing with a wrapper function or alias.

Final Thoughts

Termbin does one thing, and it does it well. No bloat, no setup, no friction—just a fast, secure way to share terminal output. If you spend time on the command line, it’s a tool worth remembering.