Guide for macOS
How to share part of your screen in a video call
On a 34" monitor the other side sees six windows at once and can read none of them. You want to share part of your screen: a spreadsheet, a design, a terminal. Here is what Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams let you do on a Mac, and what to do when they let you do nothing.
Zoom: the only one with a built-in option
Zoom can share a rectangle of your screen without any other software. Click Share Screen, open the Advanced tab and choose Portion of Screen. Zoom draws a green frame that you drag over the part you want to show.
Two things to know. The frame lives inside the call, so you set it up again in every meeting, and moving it while you present is fiddly. And the option exists only in Zoom, so the habit you build here does not carry over to a Meet or Teams call with the same colleague tomorrow.
Google Meet: tab, window or the whole screen
Meet offers three choices: a browser tab, a window, or the entire screen. There is no option for an area. On an ultra-wide monitor the entire screen is unreadable, and a window shares everything that window contains, including the parts you would rather keep to yourself.
The way around it is to give Meet a window that contains only the area you care about. That is what the next section is about.
Microsoft Teams: window or the whole screen
Teams works the same way as Meet. In the sharing tray you pick a window or a display, and an area is not among the choices. Teams on macOS also needs the Screen Recording permission before it shares anything, and it asks for it the first time you try.
One way that works in all three
Every one of these apps can share a window. So turn the area into a window: Partial Screen keeps a live copy of the region you select in a window called Partial Screen - Output, and you share that window like any other.
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Open Partial Screen and drag the frame to pick the area you want to show.
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Click Start sharing. The app opens the output window with just that area in it.
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In Zoom, Meet or Teams, choose to share a window and pick "Partial Screen - Output".
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Keep working. Whatever happens inside the area goes out, everything around it stays yours.
The area stays where you put it between calls, participants see a highlight wherever you click, and Partial Screen itself records nothing and uploads nothing.
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When something goes wrong
The shared window is black
macOS has not been given the Screen Recording permission, or it was reset by a system update. Open System Settings, go to Privacy & Security and then Screen Recording, and switch the app back on. Both the call app and Partial Screen need it.
The output window is not in the list
The list only shows open windows, so start sharing in Partial Screen first and open the sharing dialog in the call app after that.
Sharing stops after four minutes
That is the limit without a license key. Get a free license, paste the key into the app and the limit is gone.
Still stuck? Write to us or read the questions before you install.