How to Screen Share on Discord

There is hardly a gamer out there who is unfamiliar with Discord. The platform has become essential in organizing raids on Castle Nathria, defending the Empire from Skaven, and organizing your fellow Vikings for Leviathan fishing expeditions. 

Discord statistics show that more than 300 million users use the text and voice chatting platform, and the number of newly registered accounts keeps growing daily. Have a good gaming mic and a streamer-level webcam and want to show off? Discord also allows for video communication and advanced screen sharing features.

Even the best gaming hardware won’t help you stream unless you know how to set it up. With that in mind, this guide will teach you how to screen share on Discord. Let’s get started!

Share Your Screen Feature

Discord is organized into user-created servers that have text and voice channels. Users can create, delete, or modify these channels to their preference. To start sharing your screen with friends on your server, you will need to join a voice channel. 

For this example, we have created a test server and will start a live stream in the “General” voice channel. When you join a voice channel, your avatar will pop up below the channel’s name. 

You can find Discord’s share screen button below the server’s text and voice channels. Keep in mind that the button will be available only if you join a voice channel. After clicking on the Screen button, Discord will prompt you to choose from one of the applications that you currently have running.

In this instance, we chose to share the Steam app. Anyone that joins the stream would see the chat participants and the shared video feed. 

This is a helpful feature since more and more users are starting to use Discord for purposes other than gaming. The application has numerous features similar to Slack and Microsoft Teams, allowing for conferences and presentations. 

Knowing how to screen share on Discord is obviously very useful for streaming games, though. Already sitting comfortably on your gaming throne, playing a game? Discord will pick up on any games running in the background while the app is active.

To start a screen share, all you need to do is click on the game title from the app’s lower-left corner. You will have the option to adjust stream quality by choosing the resolution and framerate of your stream. If you are not a Discord Nitro user, your video resolution will be limited to 720p and 30 fps (frames per second). Discord Nitro subscribers can stream in full HD and higher resolutions at a solid 60 fps.

How To Share Screen on Discord Using Screen Overlay

Discord, like Steam, has an overlay that you can turn on through a keyboard shortcut. To see if it’s enabled, you will need to check your settings. You can access settings by clicking on the gear button.

In the overlay tab, check if the Enable in-game overlay option is turned on. Next to that option, you can find the keybind settings. The default keys for turning on the overlay are “SHIFT + `” and changing them to your preference is very straightforward. 

After calling the overlay, the procedure for sharing your gameplay is the same as the one described in the previous steps of this guide. 

Discord Screen Sharing - How To Set Up Server Permissions

If you have a large Discord server with multiple users, you might want to keep the video-sharing permissions assigned to specific users. Server owners and administrators can set up the “Video” permission for specific member roles or channels. 

To edit permissions for a specific role, access Server Settings. 

Since the small test server we set up for this guide has no roles, we will enable video streaming for everyone. 

Setting up permissions for a specific voice channel is also straightforward. The permission to share the screen on Discord can be assigned per server member role for each individual voice channel. 

The channel settings button is conveniently located next to the channel you want to edit. 

You can find the “Video” setting in the channel’s Permissions tab. Depending on the server’s roles, you will need to select the one you want to update. 

In normal circumstances, only 10 people can watch a live stream of a person using the free version of the app. However, in March of 2020, Discord increased the viewing limit to 50 viewers due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Discord’s screen sharing functionality helped teachers use the app for online classes and co-workers to collaborate on projects over vast distances, all without having to pay a dime.