Add "Anyone with the link" as a sharing option.

[asimmons]

It can be useful to host images and files directly in AGOL that can be referenced by other AGOL products like map popups, apps, and experiences. The way sharing works now in AGOL you can set the sharing level to "Owner", "Organization", "Public", or "Groups" like the image below.

Today modern file sharing solutions allow for an "Anyone with the link" option. This option can be useful in cases where you don't want files searchable by the public, but you do want the files publicly accessible. This gives you greater control over the context users see when they access to your files. Access to this setting should be controlled by the organization and based on the user role.

In my use case it would allow me to prevent anyone from accessing graphics or map symbol images that I'm hosting on AGOL for use in a popup from finding them through searching AGOL. 

[dolson_farmington]

This would be great for Survey123 as well!

[Laura_B]

@asimmons have you explored adding those members to a group, sharing the item with them, short URL or share links options?

There's some information on sharing links in this documentation  that may be helpful. 

[asimmons]

Yes @Laura_B, that option is a good solution for restricting sharing items to specific groups of AGOL users. Instead, I'm interested in creating items that are 'public' so anyone without an AGOL account could view it but I don't want those items searchable in AGOL.

Like I tried to describe in my post, I'm thinking about files that are not GIS files but more images and documents that might be referenced in an experience builder app or hub site. This might be a document or an icon for example.

[AndreaR]

Being able to share maps/apps via a link (even for a limited period of time) would be an absolute gamechanger. To be honest, not being able to share via link is a key issue that's limiting widespread deployment of GIS for us - on the one hand we're telling people that GIS is a great way to disseminate data, and then when it needs shared it transpires there's a bunch of access limitations that we don't encounter with other kinds of data. 

I have to explain to colleagues about twice a week that we cannot just share a webmap containing internal data to third parties who have been contracted to do specific work on behalf of the organisation unless they have their own AGOL log-in (which they invariably do not). We are able to share pretty much any other kind of information via a link to a specified email address from various file-sharing platforms, and non-GIS people just cannot understand why we can't do the same with webmaps. 

A common use-case for my organisation is for an external contractor to be able to get an overview of sites/locations referred to in other documentation, particularly at the start of a project. Even being able to send a link whose access expires in, for example, 2 weeks, would therefore be really useful.