How to Share Your Screen on Mac: Every Method, and the One Setting That Breaks It
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“Share your screen on Mac” means two different things, and the guides that lump them together are why you are here reading a third one.
One is sharing your screen live on a call, the Zoom demo, the Google Meet walkthrough, the FaceTime “let me show you.” The other is macOS Screen Sharing, Apple’s actual built-in app for reaching into another Mac and driving it from across the room or across the country. Different jobs, different buttons. I will do both, then the part nobody writes down: the Privacy setting that silently kills screen sharing on modern macOS, which trips up basically everyone at least once.
This is written for macOS Sequoia and Tahoe (System Settings, not the old System Preferences). If you are a couple of versions back the menus have slightly different names, and I will flag where.
Share your screen on a video call
This is what most people mean, so start here.
Zoom. In the meeting, green Share Screen button at the bottom. Pick a specific window rather than the whole desktop if you do not want everyone seeing your Slack notifications, and tick Share sound in the bottom-left if you are playing a video. That checkbox is the one people forget, then wonder why the clip is silent.
Google Meet. Bottom bar, Present now, then choose Your entire screen, A window, or A tab. Share a Chrome tab specifically when you are showing a video, because tab share is the only one that sends clean audio in Meet. Whole-screen share in Meet does not carry system sound reliably on Mac, and that is a Meet limitation, not your fault.
Microsoft Teams. Share icon (the little arrow-in-a-box) top right of the call controls, then pick the screen or window. Teams will ask for the same macOS permission I cover below the first time.
FaceTime. On a FaceTime call, the SharePlay button in the top menu bar, then Share My Screen. This one is genuinely nice for helping a family member, because both people are usually already on Apple devices and there is nothing to install.
Notice the pattern: the app does the sharing. Your Mac just has to let it. Which brings us to the thing that breaks.
The setting that makes screen sharing stop working
If you clicked Share and the other person saw a black rectangle, or the button did nothing, it is almost always this. macOS blocks screen capture until you explicitly allow each app.
Go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, Screen & System Audio Recording (on Sequoia and Tahoe it is worded like that; on Ventura and Monterey it is Screen Recording). You will see a list of apps. The one you are trying to share from, Zoom, Chrome, Teams, has to be toggled on. If you just toggled it, macOS makes you quit and reopen that app before it takes effect, and it will not tell you that clearly. Quit it fully (Cmd+Q, not just close the window) and relaunch.
That is 90% of “screen share not working on Mac.” The other 10% is usually a second display that the app is sharing instead of the one you are looking at, or a corporate MDM profile blocking it, which you cannot fix yourself and have to take to IT.
Control another Mac with Screen Sharing
Now the other meaning: the built-in Screen Sharing app, which is Apple’s remote-desktop tool. This is what “screen sharing for Mac OS X” originally referred to, and it still ships on every Mac.
On the Mac you want to reach into, turn it on: System Settings, General, Sharing, Screen Sharing toggle. Note its name or IP address.
From your Mac, open the Screen Sharing app (Spotlight, type “Screen Sharing”), and connect by Apple ID or by the other machine’s address. If both Macs are signed into the same Apple ID, or you are added as a permitted user, you get in and can see and control that desktop.
Honestly, for a quick “can you look at this,” a FaceTime SharePlay share is faster to set up than Screen Sharing, because there is no address to type. Screen Sharing earns its place when you need to actually operate the other Mac, not just look at it, click things, restart something, fix a relative’s settings without walking them through it.
When you should record instead of share
Here is the thing all of the above have in common: the moment the call ends, the share is gone. Nobody who missed it can watch it. You cannot search it. If you demoed a fix and someone asks “what did you click again,” you are doing it a second time.
For a lot of what people share, that is fine. But if you are walking a client through something, recording an onboarding, or showing a process you will explain again next week, share it once and record it so it exists afterward. A screen recording gives you a file you keep, and with ScreenApp’s Mac screen recorder you also get a transcript of what you said over it, so the recording is searchable instead of a 20-minute video nobody rewatches. Our full walkthrough of the recording side is how to screen record on a Mac.
Rule of thumb I use: if it is a conversation, share it live. If it is instructions, record it. Instructions get asked for twice.
Quick answers
Why is my screen share black on Mac? The receiving app does not have Screen Recording permission, or you allowed it but did not quit and reopen the app. Check System Settings, Privacy & Security, Screen & System Audio Recording, then fully quit and relaunch the app.
How do I share my screen with sound on a Mac? In Zoom, tick “Share sound” in the share dialog. In Google Meet, share a Chrome tab rather than the whole screen, because tab share is the only Meet option that reliably sends Mac system audio.
Can I share my screen on Mac without an app? For a video call, no, the calling app does the sharing. For helping another Apple user, FaceTime’s SharePlay screen share needs no extra install. For reaching another Mac, the built-in Screen Sharing app is already there.
Does screen sharing work between Mac and Windows? Apple’s Screen Sharing app is Mac to Mac. To share with a Windows user, use a cross-platform call app they also have, Zoom, Meet, or Teams, and share from inside it.
How do I stop sharing? Click the same share button again, now labeled Stop Share (Zoom) or the highlighted present/share icon (Meet, Teams, FaceTime). On a call, the menu bar usually shows a colored indicator you can click to stop fast.
