Screen-sharing Explained

Easy Ways to Share Content and Audio with Your Team

Do you want to share your screen or share a file during a group video meeting? Maybe even with sound or several people at once? Eyeson presents the perfect solution for you.

Structure of this article:

• Screen-sharing step by step
• Share screen as additional user
• Sharing your screen instead of your own camera
• Picture-in-picture camera on screenshare presentation
• Sharing a browser-tab with audio
• Sharing your entire screen with audio (Windows only)
• Share Tab Audio
• Ending your screen share
• Video Tutorial

Screen-sharing step by step

After you have opened your eyeson room, click on Share Screen or File in the left sidebar. This will open the presentation window where you have 4 options:

• Share screen as additional user
• Share screen instead of own video
• Share screen as full presentation
• Share Tab Audio
• Share file
  
  

Share screen as additional user

The additional screenshare user has the name '[Screenshare] <user’s name>'.

Whenever the layout has changed, the new “Presentation mode” button becomes available and resets the layout with the screenshare on top.

Sharing your screen instead of your own camera

We call this feature the ScreenCam.

To use this feature, click on Share Screen or File in the left sidebar. This will open the presentation window where you have three options:

• Share screen as full presentation
• Share screen instead of own video
• Share file

Choose the second of those three options. Everything else works the same as with our screen-sharing feature. The only difference is that you share your screen not in full-screen mode but rather instead of your own camera. This means that either everyone else can still be visible in the video stream with their cameras OR they can also share their screen as ScreenCam independently from your presentation, making it possible for several participants to share their screen at the same time. For more details about this feature and its different use cases, please read this article.

Click on the "Share screen as full presentation" Share button. Now you can again decide between three options to share:

• your entire screen
• an application window
• a certain browser tab.

In this case, you have chosen to share your entire screen, you need to click on the picture with your screen on it in order for the Share button to appear.

Note, that after you confirmed the screen-share, other participants will see exactly what you see on your screen. So, in case you need to open PPT or other presentation programs, this is possible to do with screen-sharing, meaning you just need to open a presentation on your computer and press "play".

If you are on the Mac using Google Chrome and have some problems, follow this link:
Problem With Screen Sharing After Update to Catalina?

Picture-in-picture camera on screenshare presentation

If you select “Share screen as full presentation” and then choose the entire screen, automatically a small picture-in-picture window opens, showing the user’s camera with current settings (eg. virtual background). Since the entire screen is shared, this picture-in-picture window is also part of the screenshare and so all participants will also see the presenter at the same time.
The picture-in-picture window can be moved (drag-and-drop) and also resized.
There’s a new button that is only shown during screenshare presentation that allows to switch the picture-in-picture window on or off.

Good to know: 
This feature is only available in Chrome based browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Opera and only on Desktop (not available on Firefox and Safari).
If the user has more than 1 screen (monitor), it might happen that the picture-in-picture window is placed on another screen. It can be simply moved over to the other screen.

Sharing computer sound during screen-share

With eyeson you can present any video or mp3-file with sound. The audio quality is perfect, and if needed, you can also use your microphone at the same time.

Sharing a browser-tab with audio

Let's say you want to share a YouTube video with your participants.

First, click on Share your screen button, choose Chrome Tab, select the YouTube page, and enable the checkbox "Share Audio" located on the Chrome's screen share dialog.

Important: Don't forget to activate the "Share Audio"-checkbox in the screen share pop-up!

Play the video. Now, everyone will watch and hear the YouTube video. 

Good to know:

• The Chrome browser can also play local video or audio files. Open a new tab and drag&drop the file on it, or choose “Open File…” from the menu and you’re ready to present the tab including audio.
• You can also play sound from the slides of your presentation if you are using web applications like Google Slides or others. With PowerPoint presentations it is for example possible to upload them to your OneDrive and open them using the PPT web application. (If you are using a Microsoft device, you can simply share your entire screen and open the PPT locally as explained below).
• Screen sharing with audio is currently only supported in Chrome and the new chromium-based Microsoft Edge. Please check availability in other browsers.

Sharing your entire screen with audio (Windows only)

On Windows, screen sharing with audio is not only available for browser tabs but also for the entire screen. No matter which program or file is open on your screen and what you present, you can share sound, too!

How does it work?

Sharing your screen with audio works the same way as sharing it without audio (explained above). First, click on the Share your screen button and choose the screen you want to share. Don't forget to enable the "Share Audio"-checkbox in the lower left corner.

Now, simply open any program you need for you presentation on your computer. That's it!

This way, you can play videos directly in your preferred local video player (e.g. Windows Media Player, VLC Player, etc.) or present your slides using your local applications (e.g. PowerPoint). Basically, you can use any program you want and even show browser tabs including audio, too.

Just be sure to show the programs on the screen you selected for the screen sharing if you use more than one screen.

Share Tab Audio

You can add background music to your meeting using the Share Tab Audio feature.

Numerous music applications, such as YouTube Music and Spotify, offer also web players, and so you can play the music by selecting those tabs.

Good to know: it only works with Chromium based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera)

Ending a presentation 

Screen sharing can be immediately stopped by simply clicking Stop in your video call tab. 

Video Tutorial

We prepared a short video for you as well.