How to · 7 min read

How to share your screen without showing the address bar

No browser hides its address bar when you share the whole screen. What decides it is what you share: a tab, a window, full screen or an app window. Here's how.

The short answer: there isn't a browser that hides its address bar when you share your entire screen. If the address bar is on your screen, a full-screen share sends it, along with your tabs, bookmarks and anything else that happens to be visible. That's what sharing the screen means.

What actually decides whether the other person sees your URL is what you choose to share. Pick the right option and every major browser can keep the address bar out of the picture. Here's how each option behaves, and what to do in the browsers that don't offer the tidy one.

Screen, window or tab: which ones show the address bar

When a site asks to share your screen, the browser shows its own picker, usually with up to three kinds of thing to choose from. They differ in exactly this respect:

• Entire screen. Sends everything that's on the monitor: the browser's address bar and tabs, the taskbar or Dock, notifications, other windows. No browser setting changes this.
• A window. Sends one application window as it looks, including its own frame. For a browser window that means the toolbar, the tab strip, the address bar and the bookmarks bar, if you have one showing.
• A browser tab. Sends only the rendered page. No address bar, no other tabs, no bookmarks, no extensions. This is the option that answers the question.

So the usual fix is simply: share the tab, not the window. More on what each option exposes in screen sharing in a browser, explained.

Which browsers let you share a single tab

Tab sharing depends on the browser, and it's worth checking on the version you actually have:

• Chrome and Edge (and other Chromium browsers such as Brave, Opera and Vivaldi) list your open tabs in the picker, alongside windows and screens. Choose the tab there. While it's shared, the tab is usually marked so you can see which one is live, and you can often switch the share to another tab without stopping.
• Firefox has historically offered windows and screens rather than individual tabs. If your version doesn't list tabs, use one of the workarounds below.
• Safari on macOS hands the choice to the system picker, which offers a window or a whole display. There's no tab option, so again, use a workaround.

One side effect of tab sharing worth knowing: the share follows the tab, not your screen. If you switch to another tab or another app, the other person keeps seeing the shared tab. That's usually what you want, but it can be confusing if you expected them to follow you around.

Workaround 1: put the page in full screen

If you have to share a window or the whole screen, making the page full screen removes the browser's toolbar from view:

• Windows and Linux: press F11 in Chrome, Edge or Firefox. Press it again to leave.
• macOS: press Cmd+Ctrl+F (or use the green button at the top left of the window). In Chrome on a Mac, full screen can still show the toolbar; untick View > Always Show Toolbar in Full Screen to hide it.

The catch is that you then can't see your own browser controls either, and moving the mouse to the top of the screen can briefly bring the toolbar back into view, and into the share. Fine for a presentation, awkward for anything where you need to navigate.

Workaround 2: open the page as an app window

A better option for anything you'll share repeatedly is to open the page in a window that has no address bar at all:

• Chrome: from the menu, choose Cast, save and share > Install page as app (or Create shortcut with “Open as window” ticked; the exact wording moves between versions). The page opens in its own window with a minimal title bar.
• Edge: menu > Apps > Install this site as an app.
• Safari on macOS Sonoma or later: File > Add to Dock creates a web app that opens without Safari's toolbar.
• From the command line: Chromium browsers accept --app=https://example.com, which opens that address in a bare window. Useful for a one-off, or for a desktop shortcut.

Share that window, and the other person sees the page without the URL above it. Note that the installed-app window still shows a small title bar, and some app windows show the site's domain in it, so check the preview in the picker before you commit.

Keep the rest of the browser presentable

If you share a normal browser window regularly, a few habits stop the surroundings from giving things away:

• Use a separate browser profile for presenting. A clean profile has no history suggestions, no bookmarks bar full of personal sites, no signed-in extensions, and no autocomplete that fills the address bar with something you'd rather not show.
• Hide the bookmarks bar. Ctrl+Shift+B on Windows and Linux, Cmd+Shift+B on a Mac, in Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
• Close unrelated tabs. Tab titles are readable in a window share, and titles often include names, subject lines or order numbers.
• Watch the address bar dropdown. Typing a new address mid-share shows your history suggestions to everyone. Open new pages in a tab you're not sharing.

Notifications are the bigger leak

The address bar is rarely the most revealing thing on screen. A message preview sliding in from the corner usually is. (For the wider picture of what a call can give away, see what a video call service can know about you.)

• macOS: turn on Do Not Disturb or a Focus from Control Centre. macOS can also hold back notifications while you're sharing the display (look under System Settings > Notifications), but whether a browser share triggers it depends on the version, so switch Focus on yourself rather than relying on it.
• Windows 11: turn on Do not disturb from the notification centre, or set up Focus. Windows can switch it on automatically in some situations, such as duplicating a display; don't count on that for a share from a browser.
• Browser notifications from sites like webmail follow the system setting, but it's worth muting them too if you've allowed many.

Sharing a tab also avoids this problem entirely: a system notification is drawn over the screen, not inside the page, so it isn't part of the tab's picture.

How this works in ClearChat

ClearChat doesn't have its own picker. When you press the screen button during a call, it asks the browser, and the browser shows its standard choice of tab, window or screen, depending on what it supports. Pick a tab in Chrome or Edge and the other person sees just the page.

Two things to know. ClearChat sends the picture of what you share, not the tab's sound, so if audio matters, it won't come through the share. And the screen button only appears in browsers that support sharing at all, which usually rules out phones. The share replaces your camera for as long as it runs, and the camera comes back when you stop.

← All guides · Start a call