How to screen share when using Facebook Live on desktop and the Chrome browser

There is now a new feature available for those who want to live stream from desktop using Chrome – the ability to share your screen.

It should be noted at the time of writing this article that the feature is not available for Firefox.

The following screen shots walk you through how to use this new feature.

STEP 1 – When you look to live stream from Chrome on desktop you will see the option to share your screen (item 1 on screen shot).

Clicking on that link will then prompt you to add the Chrome extension for Facebook Screen Sharing (item 2 on screen shot).

STEP 2 – If you want to check out all the details of the Chrome Extension you will need to right click on the link for the prompt to install the extension.

You will then be able to install the extension.

STEP 3 – Now you can select what you wish to share in the live stream – in my case I have two screens so I could select the screen or application I wanted to share.

STEP 4 – You will note that there will be a notification which says you can stop the screen sharing or hide the notification.

It should be noted that at this time you can not switch between screen sharing and using a camera and you can not have the camera and screen in the live stream at the same time using the extension. You could however experiment to see if you could use a tool such as Reflector2 to share your camera from a mobile devide onto the screen you are sharing as a ‘hack’ to appear on camera at the same time as sharing your screen.

This may however not be an issue for you, for example if you are sharing a presentation or tutorial, or if you prefer not to be on camera.

The feature is a useful addition for live streaming to Facebook Live if you do not want to use a third party tool or a mobile device