Announcing a configurable expiration period for public attachments

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
September 9, 2025 | September 9, 2025 | September 12, 2025

We are excited to announce that admins can now turn on an expiration period for public attachments sent to end users or recipients. Attachment expiration allows attachments to remain publicly accessible for a designated period, after which they become private and require user authentication to access.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What's changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What's changing?

Customers across all plans can now use attachment expiration to control the duration for which end users can view public attachments and inline images, enhancing your overall security posture.

Existing customers can turn on this feature anytime in Admin Center when Allow secure downloads is turned off. See Setting an expiration period for public attachments.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

From the feedback we’ve received, it became clear that a middle ground was needed between the existing Allow secure downloads feature and more flexible access options to attachments in Support.

Public attachment expiration provides just that—an alternative to private attachments in Support, which require end users to authenticate before viewing files sent to them by agents.

This feature is especially helpful for organizations with large end-user bases who prefer to offer easy access without the hurdle of authentication, while still maintaining control over how long attachments remain available.

What do I need to do?

Rollout starts today and is scheduled to be completed by September 12, 2025. To turn this feature on, see Setting an expiration period for public attachments.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.