In my time I’ve spent a LOT of time on screenshare, and I’m confident sharing my screen. Part of the confidence comes from maintaining a usage pattern that means I CAN confidently share my screen and rarely embarrass myself. After sharing some tips with a former colleague recently, I have tried to package up the best bits of that conversation and turn it into some tips to share.

Everything about this really hinges on me having two screens, if that’s not your setup, then these tips might not work brilliantly for you. Doing anything more than opening a shared document without a second screen to put the video call on is super hard work and probably needs a different approach than I’m using here.

Always share the same screen My setup has my laptop on a stand on the left, my second screen on the right, and the webcam somewhere above the join between the two. I always share the laptop screen, and never share the other one, so my computer is always set up to respect that, even when I’m not screensharing.

Good window location habits Since I know I will sometimes share my laptop screen, I never put unsafe content on that monitor. Ever. ALL chat windows are always on the not-shared screen for example, because you just don’t know when a colleague is going to suddenly DM you something.

Popups are a risk I keep my computer permanently in “do not disturb” mode and none of my applications are permitted to pop up toast notifications. I have mobile devices on a stand on my desk for that sort of thing!

Share the whole screen because otherwise you have to keep restarting to share a different tab or application. I often open a new web browser window and put the one I’m actually using onto the “do not share” space, and just open the things I do want to share in the browser window on the laptop screen.

Make the fonts bigger than you’d imagine there is always someone watching on their phone, or who doesn’t see as clearly as someone else. This is also another reason for sharing my laptop screen, always – it’s smaller than my external monitor and sharing that just makes content unreadably small (or I have to magnify everything a LOT).

Assume that the screenshare is working. To avoid the awkward “can everyone see my screen? [pregnant pause]” situation, take an audio description approach for what’s on screen. “I’m sharing this week’s meeting agenda so we can look at it together ….” someone will absolutely tell you if they don’t see it! Speaking the visual like this can be more inclusive either to those who don’t see well or to those who are looking at another window :) Sometimes it’s a useful cue that just listening is missing some of the content.

Consider your workspaces setup I use workspaces on my linux machine, essentially four different desktops that I use for different purposes. Most of the time, the desktops span monitors, and I’ll have web browser and notes apps on one, development work on another, and so on. If I know I’ll be sharing applications from multiple spaces then I sometimes set the second monitor to not change with the workspace changing. The advantage of this is that I can put the video call with other people, the speaker notes, or something else in a location where I can see it throughout the session. I also don’t need to learn/remember how to switch between things to demo – because my muscle memory will Just Work (TM) since this is my usual setup.

Your mileage will absolutely vary – and I would love to hear your tips! I so often “lead” a meeting, teach or demo something, or at one time of my life stream on Twitch, that having this setup permanent works well for me and means I don’t spend any mental energy on how to present a thing. I just turn on the share, and focus on what I’m actually trying to do. Hopefully there’s something there that will be useful in your own setup – let me know?