Screen Sharing in Different Browsers

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Who can use this guide?

  • Room Owners and Participants
  • All Plans

Quick Answers

Do I need to download any extension to screen share?

Nope! The newest versions of Chrome and Firefox have built-in screen sharing, so no need for another extension!

I just updated my MacOS to Catalina but now I can't screen share, what can I do?

In the newest release of MacOS, Apple has introduced system level permissions for accessing screen sharing. After updating, you will need to go into the Privacy section of System Preferences, and allow access to the browser that you use with Whereby. After doing this, screen sharing will be available on your device again!

Depending on what browser you're using, there will be different options for what you can share. To find out how to share your screen depending on the browser you are using, select a tab below. 

Please note, if you initially did not allow your browser permission to share your screen, you may need to clear your cache and refresh the page to get it ask permission again. Below are instructions for how to do that in some common browsers: 

Chrome

You can go into any Whereby room and click on the Share Screen button in the bottom toolbar to share your screen. When you click that, you're presented with a few different options:

You can share an image of your entire screen, which will show anything that is in focus on that screen. If you have multiple monitors, you can also select which one you'd like to show.

If you click to the Application Window section, you can select a specific window of an application like Word or Chrome that you want to share. This is great if you don't want to show your participants things that are on your desktop, or other applications that aren't relevant to your presentation.

Finally, you can use the Chrome Tab option if you only want to share one tab from your Chrome Browser.

Firefox

Where Firefox is lacking is in terms of customizing what you want to show your guests. At the moment, you can only select between which screen you want to share, and there aren't options to share only an application window or a tab in your browser.

Chromium Browsers

There are some browsers that are based off using the code of Chrome such as Opera, Vivaldi , Brave, and recently Edge which all support screen sharing.

Safari

Screen sharing is possible in Safari, but at this time it is only possible to share your entire screen or application. You cannot share an individual browser tab.