Best Practices When Sharing a Screen
In this article, we will give you some tips and best practices on how to maximize your screen sharing presentation. This will help your
IN THIS ARTICLE:
Maximize Screen Resolution
While sharing your screen, make sure to always share the proper resolution, if you are sharing a screen within a big monitor that screen will appear very distant for certain attendees:
In this screenshot, you can see that the browser window I'm sharing appears very small. This is because the screen resolution is too high. To solve this problem, I just resize the window I'm sharing by grabbing one corner:
There you go. My screen is much more legible than before. So when you are hosting demo/training webinar always make sure that your attendees will have a legible screen.
You can even zoom in your window:
When sharing your screen, note that sharing an application open on your desktop instead of an entire screen is much better for several reasons: it will be easier on your computer processor, notifications will be hidden and your attendees won't see anything else than the app you're showing (desktop icons etc.).
Enlarge the cursor pointer
This is linked to the previous issue. It's nice to have a legible screen but it is even nicer if people know where you click when you present your screen.
On Mac OS
You can follow this tutorial that will guide you through the system preferences on Mac. To paraphrase the article, you need to:
- Launch "System Preferences".
- Click either "Universal Access preference" (OS X Lion and earlier) or "Accessibility preference" (OS X Mountain Lion and later).
- Click the "Mouse" tab (OS X Lion and earlier) or click the "Display" item in the sidebar (OS X Mountain Lion and later).
- Find a horizontal slider called Cursor Size. Grab the slider and drag it to adjust the mouse pointer's size. You can dynamically see the mouse pointer resize as you drag the slider.
- Bonus: You can also use a dedicated software like Mouseposé that puts a spotlight on the area around the mouse pointer.
On Windows 10
- Open PC settings.
- Choose "Ease of Access" to enter its settings.
- Click Mouse, and choose new pointer size and color in the options.
Unclutter your screen
There's nothing worse than a screen with too much going on. If you're like me you probably have a desktop filled with documents and screenshots, folders etc. And if you're on a Mac, you probably have a dozen of apps running on your Mac menu bar. All of those things put together will distract your attendees from actually paying attention.
Hopefully, there are a few things you can to unclutter your workspace — Plus, you will feel much lighter after removing the noise:
Hide the documents on your desktop
On Mac, it requires to open up the terminal to hide them but it's very straightforward and will only take a few minutes, all you need is to follow this very detailed tutorial. Or you can download an app that will do it for you.
On Windows 10, it's even simpler: right-click on an empty area of your desktop, select the View menu and then uncheck Show desktop icons:
Turn off notifications
This is a classic: getting email or chat notification during a presentation. Not only it can be awkward getting a private email from your colleague in front of everyone, it is also very disturbing for you and your audience.
On Mac OS