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How To Enable Screen Sharing Through Skype

Sometimes, the best way to explain things to someone over the web is through screen sharing and actually walking him through the steps.

While there are various online and desktop screen sharing tools available, if you have Skype installed then that would solve the purpose.

This tutorial will explain how to enable partial or full screen sharing through Skype.

1. Open Skype. Login with your credentials.

2. Under contacts, click on name of the user with whom you are going to share your computer screen.

Note: You can’t share screen with any random person. The other user with whom you are sharing your screen must have Skype installed on his computer, and also, he must be in your contact list.

3. Go to Call-> Share Your Screen-> Share Full Screen.

Note: If you want to share only a small part of the screen then select “Share selection”. It gives you the option to adjust the size of screen you want to share.

screen sharing skype

4. A dialog box appears giving you a message that screen sharing will also start an audio call. Click OK.

screen sharing skype call

5. Your screen is shared now along with Skype audio call. You can use screen sharing for various purposes such as discussion about any issues in your computer, showing project status to your clients or collaboration purpose.

Note: Screen sharing is only available in Mac (since Skype 2.8) and Windows (since Skype 4.1) operating systems. It doesn’t work in Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) installations.

Also check How to record a Skype calls using CallGraph.

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Written By and published on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010.


  • Cylvie

    I’m on a Mac OSX 10.4 and I’m using Skype 2.8.0.851. The dialog box at step 4 doesn’t quite say the same thing. It says “do you want to share your screen?”. Whatever, I click OK, and then when the person picks up the call, the “share” button becomes inactive and the person does not see my screen. I have done the reverse test and I’m not able to see the other person’s screen as well. She is using a PC. I thought this is supposed to work regardless the platform. Please help!

    • Abhijeet

      Cylvie, yeah it should work. I am not sure too what’s happening. I was doing some research to find the answer and came across this thread on Skype forum where user is reporting similar issues – http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=508051 . No answer to that yet.

      I think you could use a web based screen sharing solution but it’s hard to find a good web based tool for the purpose that’s free. Most of them are paid. You could try out http://www.dimdim.com/ to see if it works. I’ll come up with a detailed article on web based screen sharing solutions soon.

      • Cylvie

        Well, I found this tutorial on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KScIryTVQy0
        Basically, they enable the video first and then screen sharing works. Tested it and it does work for me, but both have to have a webcam. I would prefer to screen share from my Mac to PC without having to enable video, because not everybody is equipped with a webcam, or is enclined to use the webcam. Suggestions anyone?

  • tup

    thanks for info, as for me I record Skype with IMCapture for Skype ( http://www.imcapture.com )

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