pastey

A no-login image sharing webapp. Paste or drop an image, get a link, it disappears on schedule. Written with a robot.

View Demo

Features

• Paste (Cmd/Ctrl+V) or drag & drop to share an image
• Accepts PNG, JPG, and WEBP — all uploads are converted to WebP and stripped of EXIF/metadata
• Configurable expiry: 1 hour up to 1 week
• Optional "delete after N views" with bot-resistant view counting (link previews and crawlers don't count)
• Uploader's own views never count against the view limit (cookie-based)
• Automatic cleanup runs every 30 minutes
• URL is copied to the clipboard automatically after upload
• Tasteful IE6-era 404 page

Tech stack

Concern	Choice
Runtime	Bun
Language	TypeScript
Web server	Express 5
Database	SQLite via bun:sqlite
Scheduling	cron
Image processing	sharp

Configuration

config.json

Key	Type	Default	Description
reallyDeleteFiles	boolean	true	When true, expired files are deleted from disk. When false, only the database record is removed, making the file inaccessible but leaving it on disk.

.env

Copy .env.example to .env and adjust as needed. Bun loads this automatically.

PORT=3000

Docker

The easiest way to run pastey. Images are published to the GitHub Container Registry automatically on every push to main.

# Download docker-compose.yml
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geoffoliver/pastey/main/docker-compose.yml

# Start
docker compose up -d

The app will be available at http://localhost:3000. Uploads and the database are stored in named Docker volumes (pastey_uploads and pastey_data) so they survive container restarts and upgrades.

To update to the latest image:

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Environment variables (Docker)

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	3000	Port the app listens on inside the container
DATABASE_PATH	/app/data/pastey.db	Path to the SQLite database file

Development

yarn install
yarn dev      # hot-reloading via bun --hot

Production

First-time setup

Run init-pm2.sh once on the server to install pm2, pm2-logrotate, and start the app:

bash init-pm2.sh

Directory structure

pastey/
├── config.json          # app configuration
├── .env                 # environment variables (not committed)
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── docker-publish.yml   # builds & pushes image to ghcr.io
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts         # Express server + routes
│   ├── db.ts            # SQLite setup and schema
│   ├── scheduler.ts     # cron-based expiry cleanup
│   └── config.ts        # typed config loader
├── public/
│   ├── index.html       # sharing UI
│   └── 404.html         # error page
├── uploads/             # uploaded files (YYYY/MM/DD/uuid.webp)
├── pastey.db            # SQLite database
├── init-pm2.sh          # first-time server setup