How to Share Your Screen on Discord Mobile

Dec. 22, 2020

Discord started out as achat service for gamersto stay connected with their teammates and eventually pivoted itself as a platform accommodating a wide range of communities that are not just gamers. If you are an active Discord user, you might already know that the company never really offered the option to share your screen on mobile while it offered the functionality across its desktop versions. Fortunately, that has changed now. Following abeta test run of screen sharing on Android, Discord hasfinally added mobile screen sharingon iOS and Android. Today, we’re going to take a look at how you can use the feature on your smartphone.

Share Screen on Discord Mobile

We’ll be covering the method to start or stop screen sharing, how you can join a session, supported platforms, and things you should keep in mind while using the feature. Feel free to use the table of contents below to navigate through these sections.

1. The first step to start a screen sharing session on Discord mobile is toinitiate avoice or video call. You can do this in a personal chat, group DM, or voice/video channels of a server. You’ll find the button to start a voice or video call in the top-right corner of the app.

2. Once you’re in,you’ll see a new ‘Screen Share’ button in the call interface. If you’re on a voice call, you can access the screen share button byswiping up from the bottom portionof the page. For those on video calls, the option to start screen sharing is present right in the bottom row of quick controls.

3. As soon as you tap on the screen share button, a prompt will appear urging you to confirm if you want to share your screen.Press ‘Start now’ to start the screen-sharing session. If successful, you will see a page that reads ‘You’re sharing your screen!’. You can then switch to other apps that you would like to share with your friends.

4. After you’re done with screen sharing, you have three options to stop the session. First up, you should switch back to the Discord app.From the screen share confirmation page, tap on ‘Stop Sharing’. Alternatively, you can press the ‘Stop Streaming’ button from the bottom navigation to end the session.

5. If you’re in a hurry, you can also access the notification panel and tap on the ‘Stop streaming’ button on the Discord app’s notification to terminate the session.

6. Now that you know how to start and stop screen sharing, let’s take a look at how you can join a friend’s screen share. As soon as a friend starts sharing their screen while you’re connected via voice/video,you’ll see a button titled ‘Watch Stream’. Tap on it to join.

7. Notably, you can switch between streams if multiple friends are sharing their screens at the same time. To switch streams, all you have to do is tap on the Watch Stream button on the second friend’s stream.

You can use Discord’s mobile screen sharing across Android and iOS. The featuresupports Android phones running Lollipop (5.0) and above. In addition, audio sharing capability within a screen share session is supported on devices running Android 10 and above. While you can use screen sharing on both Android and iOS, the companydoesn’t support the feature on iOS 12at this moment. However, the good news is that the developers at Discord are working to add support in the foreseeable future.

Coming to apps, Discord notes that a few apps may not support audio sharing on Android devices. That said, it should work on most apps you use on a daily basis. On a similar note, do keep in mind thatyou can’t use this feature on streaming apps such as Netflix and Spotifydue to app restrictions. Another aspect worth mentioning is that you need Video permissions in your role to be able to share your screen within a server.

When you’re screen sharing, remember that viewers can look at anything that’s visible on your phone’s screen. Hence, if you have sensitive information lying around unprotected in your phone, especially in thephoto gallery,you might have to cross verify before sharing. You canuse one of these apps to hide private photos and videos.

To avoid extra load, the company recommends closing apps that are currently not in use before sharing your screen. Moreover, you can also enable Do Not Disturb mode to avoid getting notifications and unwanted interruptions while you’re in the middle of a session.

No. You can’t use Discord’s screen sharing on iPads at this moment. However, Discord promises to support the feature on iPads in a future release. Meanwhile, you canuse services like Zoom to share your screenwith your friends from iPad.

Screen sharing streams on Discord currently support atotal of 50 viewers excluding the broadcaster.

You can follow the steps in the ‘Start Screen Sharing on Discord Mobile’ section to get started. However, do keep in mind that iOS 12 is not supported right now.

If you’re not seeing the screen sharing button, make sure you’ve updated the Discord app to the latest version available onGoogle Play StoreorApple’s App Store.

Unfortunately, you can’t use Discord’s mobile screen sharing to watch Netflix with your friends. You can check out our guide featuring apps towatch movies together with friends online.

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.