How to Share Your Screen in Microsoft Teams (Without Oversharing)

Screen sharing is one of the most useful things you can do in a Teams meeting — walking someone through a spreadsheet, presenting slides, or getting help with a problem. It's also where embarrassing moments happen, like a personal email popping up in front of the whole team.

Here's how to share, and how to share safely.

1. Join the Teams meeting.
2. In the meeting controls at the top, click Share (the icon of a box with an arrow).
3. Choose what to share:
• Screen — everything on your monitor.
• Window — just one app.
• PowerPoint Live — present a PowerPoint file (see below).
4. Click the one you want.

A coloured border appears around whatever is being shared, so you always know what others can see.

Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + E (Command + Shift + E on a Mac) opens the sharing options.

This is the most important tip. If you share a window, people only see that one app. Notifications, your inbox and anything else you open stay private.

If you share your whole screen, everything is visible — including pop-up messages and email notifications.

Tip: If you must share your whole screen, turn on Do Not Disturb first (Windows key + N on Windows 11, or Focus in Control Centre on a Mac) and close anything you don't want seen.

If you're sharing a video or anything with audio, switch on Include computer sound (sometimes shown as Include sound) at the top of the share options before you choose what to share. Otherwise, people will see the video but hear nothing.

Choose PowerPoint Live in the Share menu and pick your file (or Browse for it). You get:

• Your speaker notes and slide thumbnails — visible only to you.
• A laser pointer, pen and highlighter.
• A smoother experience for people on slow connections.

Attendees see just the slides. By default they can't skip ahead — you can control that with the eye icon.

Click Stop sharing in the meeting controls, or in the toolbar at the top of your shared screen. You can also press Ctrl + Shift + E again.

Need a colleague to click around on your screen? While sharing, move your pointer to the top of the screen to reveal the sharing toolbar, click Give control, and choose their name. Click Take back control when you're done.

You can also Request control when someone else is sharing.

The first time you share on a Mac, macOS will block it until you give Teams permission:

1. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security.
2. Click Screen & System Audio Recording (called Screen Recording on older macOS).
3. Turn on Microsoft Teams.
4. Quit and reopen Teams when asked.

The Share button is greyed out. The organiser may have limited sharing to presenters. Ask them to make you a presenter (People > ⋯ next to your name > Make a presenter).

Others see a black screen. You may be sharing a protected video (like Netflix) or an app that blocks capture. On a Mac, check the permission above. Try sharing a window instead of the whole screen, or vice versa.

It's blurry or slow for everyone else. Close other apps and browser tabs, and use a wired connection if you can. Sharing a single window is lighter than sharing a whole high-resolution screen.

Click Share, pick a window rather than your whole screen where you can, and turn on Include computer sound for videos. For slides, PowerPoint Live is the way to go.