Reading Time: 5 minutes

It’s 2021. We’re somewhere between one and thirteen years into the pandemic. Time isn’t really relevant any more, but what is relevant is what the hell is going on in your Zoom / Slack / Teams / Skype / Google Meets screensharing session.

I’ve worked remotely for a decade, as have many of my colleagues. We’re over here debating how far into the Greek alphabet we’re getting into on viral variants while some of y’all are still starting every meeting with, “can you hear me,” without even the tiniest sense of irony.

Enough. I’m sorry we made it a quarter-century into a pandemic before someone explained to you how to do a digital screenshare. Let’s rip this bandaid off and moveon.org, shall we?

Close All Non-Relevant Windows

I don’t care if you’ve had Chrome open since the Reagan administration and have been curating a literal (yes, I mean literal) legion of tabs.

Close it down. Close all windows unrelated to the screen you are showing.

You will end up showing the window or it will purposefully and maliciously die on you, causing your video feed to freeze on your Uncle Mike’s picture of a possum he hit last spring.

Are you a power user with Windows / Mac and have multiple desktops?

Tell your mom. I bet she’s impressed.

No one else wants to see your in-progress TikTok profile and half-sent tweets. You will inevitably end up switching screens and showing something you didn’t mean to.

Close.

All.

Windows.

Are you sharing a single window?

So only share that one.

You can quit reading, good job, champ.

Close and Quit All Non-Work Chat Apps

Did I mention I have colleagues? I did, didn’t I. You know what my colleagues do? They bitch about people doing screenshares wrong.

You know what I don’t want? For my co-workers and clients to know how much I secretly hate them. So I quit the chat apps. Not. close. Quit.

In Windows, this is alt + f4

In Mac, this is cmd + q

Quit it, delete it, and empty the trash if necessary. Do not create the possibility that co-workers or clients will see your dad’s question about foot fungus treatment or your mom’s “proof” that Biden is secretly a robot.

You will forget to mute one, a notification will pop-up in your screenshare, and now you’re going to have to figure out if you’re supposed to act like you didn’t notice that Rob sent you that “Have you checked your butthole?” TikTok ¹.

Mute Work Chat Apps

Here’s the secret business no one seems to be passing around:

While the screenshare is going on, people are gonna wanna talk to you about it. Those people assume you were the cool kid — the one who actually brought enough gum to share with everyone when the teacher asked — and if we’re honest here, we’re all disappointed in how this worked out.

The cool kids know you mute the work-related chat apps. If, God-help-you, you’re still working from Skype, set it to Do Not Disturb.

For Slack, click on that there workspace name, choose “preferences”, and then click on Notifications. Change them.

It’s a bummer that Slack has multiple workspaces and that notification settings are on a per-channel basis, and it’s hard mute Slack for a minute.

But…

• If those other workspaces aren’t work-related, sign out
• SuckitupButterCup and do the hard thing and change your notifications.

For Teams, hit those three horizontal dots and turn off all the things

“all the things” means all the things.

I do not want to hear that ear-worm-infesting Slack notification sound because Todd is pinging you his thoughts about the IPAs this season.

If you want to be part of the the screensharing chatting chat conversation, do it on your phone or another device.

Do not expose another person’s conversation.

yeah, so close out outlook, too.

If You are Sharing a Browser Window, Hide Your Personal Details

No one needs to see where you bank, how often you hit Buzzfeed, and what Google Searches you have saved. Companies get hacked in all sorts of creative ways, and they all revolve around

• Tricking people into giving up information
• Looking for where people gave up information

Hide your Bookmarks

Right click into your bookmarks bar and choose, “hide”. I one time, years ago, did a screenshare and got (rightfully) reamed by my boss because I had a bookmark that referenced my previous employer, who was a vendor the current client hated. Had the client noticed that, he would’ve had serious cause for concern that I was passing information on.

But don’t show your auto complete history, either

I usually demo in a browser that I don’t use for daily… browsing. My main browser is FireFox, so I demo in Chrome. The reason is that I don’t want to risk clicking in that URL bar and typing a single letter and having to explain some 26 letters of the alphabet that have nothing to do with work.

Chrome and Edge have a cool extension called “Open as a pop-up” . This hides the URLs and the bookmark toolbar in the window. Do that.

Keep a browser around just for demoing.

Clean Up Your Desktop

Would you invite someone into your home without sweeping the damned floor? No?

You wouldn’t throw a party and when the guests get there say, “hey, don’t mind the pizza boxes, CD collection, Trueblood fanfiction, and photos of the monster truck rally?” Really?

Then clean your damned desktop you hooligan. Show some dignity.

Select everything, put it in a folder, if you want. We don’t care.

When you show a desktop that looks like it was painted by Jackson Pollack huffing compressed air, we will judge you.

• You can have a total of 19 items on your desktop, not including a trash can
• They shall not exceed 3 contiguous rows
• They shall not exceed 2 contiguous columns

Listen I don’t know why the numbers play out this way but they just do so won’t you please for the children think of how this will sear into our minds and prevent us from thinking of anything else.

All I know is that failure to do this will result in many judgemental things we will say in a chat room you don’t know about because it won’t pop up in our screenshares.

You are Legally Required to Warn Someone if You’re a Light-mode User

I will call the f**king FBI if you don’t say that before starting the screenshare.

Look, if you like light-mode because you’re a fed, that’s fine. I’m cool with feds. I’m not judging you.

But a lot of people have gotten used to using computers in ways that don’t immediately assault their retinas and if you show them a giant white canvas you might as well expect a SWAT team at your door in the hour because my eyes have been assaulted.

TL;DR

• Don’t show absolutely anything that you wouldn’t want put up on a billboard in Nigeria. ¹
• Barring turning the computer off and throwing it in a river, don’t let chat conversations become visible to anyone
• If you gotta stay in the chat, do it on another device, dude
• Clean your desktop
• You will not get invited to after parties if you don’t clean your desktop