How to keep your notes private while screen sharing
Updated November 2, 2026
Presenting with notes is normal. Showing them to everyone isn’t. Here are four ways to keep notes on your side of the screen in Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, from built-in settings to dedicated tools, with the trade-off of each.
1. Share a window or a tab, not your whole screen
Every major meeting app can share a single window instead of your entire display. Anything outside that window, including your notes, stays private.
- Zoom: click Share Screen and pick the app’s window instead of the Screen tile.
- Google Meet: click Share screen and choose a window or a browser tab instead of your entire screen.
- Microsoft Teams: click Share and choose a specific window instead of a screen.
The trade-off: when you switch apps mid-presentation, your audience keeps seeing the old window until you change what you’re sharing.
2. Use presenter view on a second display
PowerPoint and Keynote can show your speaker notes on one display and the slides on the other. Share only the display with the slides. In Google Slides, presenter view opens your notes in a separate window, so share the presentation tab rather than the screen.
The trade-off: it works best with two displays. On a single laptop screen you’ll need to run the slideshow in a window and share just that window.
3. Keep your notes on another device
A phone or tablet next to your laptop is invisible to any screen share, and it needs no setup.
The trade-off: glancing down at another device is noticeable on camera, and you can’t search your notes quickly while you talk.
4. Use an overlay that screen capture can’t see
A capture-protected overlay sits on top of everything you’re sharing but is left out of the share itself. That’s how incogno works: you can share your entire screen, switch apps freely, and keep notes, the live transcript and AI answers on your display only.
The trade-off: it relies on operating-system protection that ordinary screen sharing respects, but it can’t hide anything from hardware capture or from someone looking at your monitor. See how stealth mode works, and its limits.
Before you present: a 30-second checklist
- Turn on Do Not Disturb (Focus on Mac, Do not disturb on Windows) so message previews don’t pop up while you share.
- Close tabs and windows you wouldn’t want on screen by accident.
- Check the meeting app’s sharing preview before you start talking.
- If you rely on a private overlay, test it once in a meeting with only yourself.