How to Share Your Screen on Facebook Live

If you’ve been wary of using Facebook Live because it doesn’t offer the features you want, things are improving. When you stream live via your desktop, you can share your screen.

You can…

Do a live demo or review an app that you access online.
Share a slide deck while teaching a live training session.
Show your peeps the content of a Word doc, Excel spreadsheet, or any software installed on your computer.
Host a live coaching session or Q&A while sharing your screen within a Facebook Group you administer.

How to get started

From your Page, Group, Event, or Personal Profile, click Start a Live Video.

From the popup dialogue box, select whether you want to use your integrated webcam or an auxiliary webcam.

Select whether you want to use your computer’s internal mic or an external mic.

Click Share Screen.

You’ll be prompted to install a browser extension (I use Chrome, and have heard that this is the best browser to use for Facebook Live screen sharing).

Choose from three options

1. Share your entire screen. Before sharing your screen, close all browser tabs and apps except the one you want to share, as this option shows everything visible on your screen. Closing the tabs you don’t want people to see helps viewers focus on what you do want them to see, and protects your privacy.

2. Chrome tab. Select a specific tab that’s open in your Chrome browser and share only the contents of that tab. There’s a small “Share audio” button you can check or uncheck. For example, if you want to share a YouTube video, check “Share audio” so the video will play the sound.

3. Application window. Open the software application you want to share (such as a PowerPoint slide deck or Word doc) and click Share.

Here’s a preview of what I see when I share a slide deck:

To get comfortable with how it works, test all three sharing options without going live. Try them one at a time, and click “Stop Sharing” after each test.

Be sure NOT to click “Go Live” until you’re ready to start streaming.

As an alternate testing method, do a live broadcast via your personal profile and set the privacy to “Only Me.” This allows you to do a private trial run of your entire broadcast so you can work out the kinks before going public.

One major drawback

As of this writing, you can’t switch back and forth between your webcam (to show your smiling face) and your presentation/screenshare. When you stop sharing your screen, the live stream also stops. That’s a big oops on Facebook’s part, as a key selling point for Facebook Live (so far) has been the ability to broadcast your face.

So for now, it’s either/or. Either live stream your talking head video, or stream your desktop. Unless you integrate a third party app (and I’m too unmotivated to go to the extra hassle of setting that up), you have to choose.

The good news

For those of us who detest being on camera, the ability to live stream our desktop is a huge relief. Instead of pre-recording my screenshare videos and uploading them to Facebook, I can now do live trainings where I can interact directly with viewers while sharing my slide decks.