Share your screen in a Zoom meeting

Sharing your screen in a Zoom meeting allows other meeting attendees to observe you interacting with any of your applications on your computer. Both hosts and participants have permission to screen share by default. While screen sharing, you will still be able to see and talk to attendees, respond to chat messages, and use other Zoom tools. Stop screen sharing to return to the basic zoom meeting display. A common example of screen sharing involves giving a presentation remotely using an application like PowerPoint running on your computer.

Sharing your screen

While participating in a live Zoom meeting, follow the steps below to share your screen:

Click the Share Screen button located in your meeting controls (Fig 1).
Select the screen you want to share (Fig 2). You can choose to share your entire desktop, an individual application that is running on your computer, or a whiteboard (i.e., a blank page with drawing tools)
Check Share computer sound if you want any sound from your computer (e.g., audio from a YouTube clip) shared in the meeting.
Check Optimize for full screen video clip if you will be sharing a video clip in full screen mode. Do not check this otherwise, as it may cause the shared screen to be blurry.
Select Share. Zoom will automatically switch to full screen to optimize the shared screen view. To exit full-screen, select Exit Full Screen in the top-right corner or press the Esc key.

Fig 1. Select the Share Screen button.

Fig 2. Select what you want to share

Meeting control while sharing

When you start sharing your screen, the meeting controls will appear in a floating toolbar that you can drag around your screen (Fig 3). The toolbar has the following options:

Mute/Unmute: Mute or unmute your microphone.
Start/Stop Video: Start or stop your in-meeting video.
Participants/Manage Participants: View or manage the participants (if the host).
New Share: Start a new screen share. You will be prompted to select which screen you want to share again.
Pause Share: Pause your current shared screen.
Annotate / Whiteboard: Display annotation tools for drawing, adding text, etc.
More: Hover over more for additional options (Fig 4)
Chat: Open the chat window.
Invite: Invite others to join the meeting.
Record: Start recording locally or to the cloud.
Allow/Disable participants annotation: Allow or prevent the participants from annotating on your shared screen.
Show/Hide Names of Annotators: Show or hide the participants' name when they are annotating on a screen share. If set to show, the participant's name will briefly display beside their annotation.
Live on Workplace by Facebook: Share your meeting or webinar on Workplace by Facebook. Learn more about live-streaming a webinar. Learn more about live-streaming a meeting.
Optimize Share for Full-screen Video Clip: Start optimizing for a video clip in full screen mode.
End Meeting: Leave the meeting or end the meeting for all participants.