---
title: "Let demo viewers share a demo from the player"
slug: "/help/demos/publish/viewer-sharing"
topic: "demos"
last_updated: "2026-09-24T11:08:45.357Z"
---

## **Overview**

Walnut demos can now be shared by the **viewers themselves**. When you enable
viewer sharing on a demo, a small **Share demo** control appears inside the
player — either as a pill in the corner of the screen or as an entry in the
guides-toolbar footer — so a prospect who receives your demo can forward it to
a colleague with one click.

The forwarded link opens the same demo, but with the original recipient's
identity stripped out. That means the second viewer starts a fresh session,
sees the email gate as themselves (rather than piggy-backing on the first
viewer), and shows up in analytics with a **`viewerShare`** source
attribution.

**Why this matters:** Champions often need to re-send a demo internally to
build consensus. Viewer sharing removes the "please forward this link"
friction and gives you a clean signal in analytics for every internal
share that came out of a real viewer's forwarded copy.

---

## **Turn viewer sharing on for a demo**

1. Open the demo (from the library or the template) and click **Set Demo
   Preferences → Link Settings**, or click **Create & Share Demo** on the
   template and open the **Link Settings** tab.
2. Toggle **Let viewers share this demo** on.
3. Save.

The setting lives on each demo, so you decide per demo whether the pill
should appear.

---

## **What the viewer sees**

- The **Share demo** control appears in the bottom corner of the player.
  Which corner it uses matches your guides-toolbar position (bottom-left or
  bottom-right).
- If the guides toolbar is on screen, the same control lives in the
  toolbar's footer instead of the pill — so viewers never see both at once.
- Clicking the control copies the demo link to the viewer's clipboard, and
  the label briefly changes to **Link copied** to confirm.

The control does not appear on mobile viewports, in the render-service video
export, or on demos that have viewer sharing turned off.

---

## **What the forwarded link carries — and what it strips**

Viewer sharing is designed so a forwarded link cannot leak the original
viewer's identity or bypass gates. When a viewer copies the link, Walnut
removes:

| Removed from the URL | Why |
| --- | --- |
| `email` | The recipient must enter their own email at the gate. |
| `proceed=true` | The email/verification gate skip does not transfer. |
| `opportunityId`, `accountId`, `contactId`, `leadId` | CRM attribution belongs to the original recipient, not the forward. |

The screen the viewer was on **is** preserved, so the recipient lands on the
same step the sharer wanted to point them at.

Sessions started from a forwarded link are tagged with `source=viewerShare`
in analytics. Because a link that already carries CRM attribution keeps that
attribution, this metric is a **floor** on internal forwards, not a
count — it captures the shares that would otherwise have been invisible.

---

## **Interaction with other demo settings**

- **Watermark / white-label:** the share control renders in every demo that
  has viewer sharing on, whether or not the Walnut watermark is present.
  White-label workspaces still get the pill.
- **Floating action button:** when the FAB and the share pill would occupy
  the same corner, the pill lifts above the FAB so the demo's primary CTA
  stays clickable.
- **Access control:** viewer sharing does not widen who can view the demo.
  If access is limited to specific viewers, the forwarded recipient still
  has to pass the same email gate, allow-list, and (if configured) access
  code.
- **Preview / editor:** the pill only appears in a real published-demo
  context. It is inert in the editor, in previews, and in embedded launcher
  contexts.

---

## **Analytics**

Every viewer-share click is tracked as **Demo Player: Viewer Share:
Clicked**, with the surface (pill or toolbar) recorded. Sessions the shared
link opens carry `source=viewerShare`, so you can filter Insights and the
sessions table for demos that spread through forwarding.