screen sharingprivacyhow-to

How to Blur Parts of Your Screen During Screen Sharing (2026)

Learn how to protect sensitive information during Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet screen sharing sessions. Compare methods: Zoom blur, OBS, and Chrome extensions.

2026-02-15-8 min read

It happens fast. You join a Zoom call, share your screen to walk through a dashboard, and somewhere in the corner sits a Slack DM, a bank balance, a client name under NDA, or a salary column you forgot to collapse. Someone on the call sees it. Maybe they say something. Maybe they don't.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. A 2023 survey by Tessian found that 52% of employees have accidentally shared sensitive information during virtual meetings. Screen sharing is the biggest vector. You intend to show one thing, but your entire screen is visible -- notifications, browser tabs, bookmarks, personal messages, all of it.

The good news: there are real solutions to this problem. Some are built into your video conferencing tool. Some require third-party software. And some work directly in your browser with zero configuration.

This guide walks through three methods to blur your screen while sharing, compares their tradeoffs, and gives you a step-by-step approach for the one that works best for web-based content. Whether you are a developer doing a live demo, a sales rep showing a CRM, or a manager pulling up HR dashboards, you will find something here that fits your workflow.

Method 1: Zoom's built-in background blur

Zoom has a blur feature. You have probably seen it. But there is a critical distinction that trips people up: Zoom's blur only applies to your webcam background, not to your shared screen.

When you enable "Blur My Background" in Zoom settings, it uses AI to detect your face and blurs the room behind you. This is useful if you are working from a messy apartment or a coffee shop. It does nothing for the content on your display.

Zoom does offer a few screen-sharing privacy features worth knowing about:

Desktop filter: You can choose to share a single window instead of your entire desktop. This limits what attendees see to that one application.
Annotation tools: Zoom lets you draw over your shared screen, but this is manual and clunky -- not a real blur.
Focus mode: Hides participant screens from each other. Does not hide your shared content.

The limitation: None of these actually blur specific parts of your screen. Our Zoom privacy guide covers what Zoom can and cannot do. If the sensitive information lives inside the window you are sharing -- a spreadsheet column, a sidebar, an account number in a web app -- Zoom gives you no way to hide it. You share the window or you don't.

This matters for anyone who needs to share a browser tab. If your CRM, analytics tool, or admin panel has data you don't want visible, Zoom's built-in features will not help. You need something that operates at a finer level of granularity.

Method 2: OBS virtual camera

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is a free, open-source tool primarily used by streamers. But it has a lesser-known capability that some people use for screen sharing privacy: you can create a virtual camera feed that crops, masks, or overlays parts of your screen.

Here is how it works at a high level:

Install OBS on your machine.
Add a "Display Capture" or "Window Capture" source.
Use the crop/pad filter or add a colored rectangle overlay to cover sensitive areas.
Start the OBS virtual camera.
In Zoom, Teams, or Meet, select "OBS Virtual Camera" as your camera or use it with screen share.

Where OBS shines: It gives you total control. You can create complex scenes, switch between layouts, and mask arbitrary regions of your screen. If you are a streamer or content creator, you probably already know how to do this.

Where OBS falls short for most people:

Setup complexity: OBS has a steep learning curve. Configuring sources, filters, and scenes is not intuitive for someone who just wants to hide a sidebar on a dashboard.
Static regions: The crop and overlay approach in OBS is position-based. If you scroll, resize your browser, or navigate to a different page, your overlay no longer covers the right area. You have to manually reposition it.
Performance: OBS consumes meaningful CPU and memory resources. Running OBS alongside Zoom and a resource-heavy web app can cause lag, especially on older machines or laptops.
Not element-aware: OBS does not understand what is on your screen. It blurs or covers pixel regions. It cannot selectively target a specific DOM element, a sidebar, or a notification banner the way a browser-aware tool can.

OBS is a powerful tool, but it is a general-purpose solution being forced into a narrow use case. For people who primarily share browser content (which is most knowledge workers in 2026), there is a simpler path.

This is where purpose-built tools enter the picture. A privacy extension that understands the structure of web pages can blur specific elements -- a div, a table column, a notification panel -- without affecting the rest of your screen. Because it operates inside the browser, it works regardless of which video conferencing tool you use. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, any platform that captures your browser window will show the blurred content.

ContextBlur is a Chrome extension that does exactly this. It lets you blur, hide, or redact parts of any web page before and during screen sharing. No OBS setup, no manual overlays, no hoping that your crop filter is positioned correctly.

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The core idea is simple: if you can see it in your browser, you can blur it. Click on an element, and it gets blurred. The blur persists across page loads if you want it to, and it disappears when you are done. It is designed for the specific workflow of sharing your screen in a meeting while keeping sensitive data hidden from attendees.

Before diving into how it works, here is a quick comparison of all three methods:

| Feature | Zoom Blur | OBS | ContextBlur | |---|---|---|---| | Blurs screen content | No | Yes (manual) | Yes | | Element-level targeting | No | No | Yes | | Setup time | None | 15-30 min | 30 seconds | | Works with all meeting tools | N/A | Yes | Yes | | Handles dynamic pages | N/A | No | Yes | | Performance impact | None | Moderate-High | Minimal | | Cost | Free with Zoom | Free | Free tier available |

Here is how to go from install to blurred content in under a minute.

Step 1: Install the extension

Go to the Chrome Web Store and add ContextBlur to your browser. It requires minimal permissions -- it only needs access to modify the visual appearance of web pages you visit. There is no data collection, no account creation, and no backend server receiving your page content.

Navigate to whatever web app, dashboard, or page you will be showing during your meeting. This could be a Salesforce dashboard, a Google Analytics report, a Jira board, a Notion workspace -- anything rendered in Chrome.

Step 3: Activate click-to-blur mode

Open the ContextBlur side panel from the extension icon in your toolbar. Click the "Click to Blur" button. Your cursor changes to a crosshair-style selector.

Step 4: Click the elements you want to hide

Click on any element you want blurred. ContextBlur identifies the DOM element under your cursor and applies a CSS blur filter to it. You will see the element become unreadable immediately.

Want to blur a sidebar? Click it. A specific table column? Click a cell and ContextBlur blurs the column. A notification badge showing a message preview? Click it.

Join your Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet call and share your screen or browser tab as usual. The blurred elements stay blurred. Attendees see the blur effect just as you do -- there is nothing to configure on their end.

Step 6: Remove blurs when you are done

After your meeting, open the ContextBlur panel and click "Remove All Blurs" or click individual elements to unblur them. Your page returns to normal.

Going deeper: Click-to-blur, auto-blur, and persistent blurs

The basic click-to-blur workflow covers most situations. But ContextBlur has a few additional capabilities worth knowing about if you share your screen regularly. You can explore the full list on the features page.

Click-to-blur

This is the default mode described above. You activate it, click elements, and they get blurred. It is manual and intentional, which makes it good for one-off meetings where you want to quickly hide a few things.

Auto-blur with saved rules

If you find yourself blurring the same elements every time you open a particular site, you can save blur rules. ContextBlur lets you define CSS selectors or use a visual picker to create persistent rules that apply automatically when you visit a page.

For example, you might set a rule that always blurs the sidebar in your HR dashboard, or always blurs the revenue column in your analytics tool. The next time you open that page, the blurs are already applied. No manual clicking needed.

This is particularly useful for recurring meetings. If you do a weekly team standup where you share your project management tool, you can set it once and forget about it.

Adjustable blur intensity

Not everything needs to be fully obscured. Sometimes you want to indicate that data exists without making it readable. ContextBlur lets you adjust the blur intensity so you can make elements slightly blurred (recognizable as a block of text but unreadable) or completely opaque.

Sometimes you need to reveal a blurred element mid-meeting. Rather than removing all blurs, you can toggle individual elements on and off. This is useful when someone asks a question and you need to check a number that is currently blurred -- you glance at it without exposing it to the full audience by temporarily pausing screen share, unblurring, checking, and re-blurring.

Regardless of which tool you use, these habits will reduce the risk of accidental exposure. For seven specific habits, see our privacy tips.

This is the single most impactful change you can make. Every major video conferencing tool lets you share a single application window or browser tab instead of your full desktop. Do that. Always.

Sharing your full desktop means every notification, every app switch, and every accidental click is visible. Sharing a single tab limits the blast radius.

2. Close what you don't need before the call

Close Slack, Discord, email, and any application that might throw a notification across your screen. If you cannot close them, at least enable Do Not Disturb mode on your OS. Our guide on hiding notifications covers this in detail.

Chrome profiles let you create isolated browser environments. Create a "Presentations" profile with only the bookmarks, extensions, and logins you need for meetings. No personal bookmarks bar. No embarrassing autofill suggestions. This is a clean separation that costs nothing.

4. Prepare your blurs before the meeting, not during it

If you are using ContextBlur or any visual masking tool, set it up before the call starts. Fumbling with blur tools while people are watching defeats the purpose. Take 30 seconds before the meeting to blur what needs to be blurred.

Most video conferencing tools let you preview your shared screen before others see it. Use this. Start the share, look at the preview thumbnail, and verify nothing sensitive is visible. This 10-second check has saved countless people from embarrassing moments.

Zoom shows a green border around whatever you are sharing. Teams shows a red border. Google Meet highlights the tab. Know what these look like so you always know what is being broadcast.

7. Have a kill switch

Know how to stop sharing instantly. Memorize the keyboard shortcut for your platform. On Zoom, it is the "Stop Share" button in the toolbar or you can use Alt+S (Windows) / Cmd+Shift+S (Mac). On Google Meet, click the presentation bar at the bottom of your screen. Being able to instantly kill a share is your last line of defense.

Different scenarios, same need

The need to hide info during screen sharing comes up in a wide range of professional contexts. Our use cases page covers some of the most common ones, but here are a few that come up frequently:

Developers doing live demos who need to hide environment variables, API keys in dashboards, or internal tool admin panels.
Sales reps walking clients through a CRM where other client names and deal amounts are visible in sidebars and lists.
Managers presenting HR dashboards where salary data, performance review scores, or personal employee information is displayed alongside the metrics they want to show.
Support agents sharing their screen with a customer while their internal ticketing system shows notes, escalation status, or other customer records.
Consultants screen sharing analytics dashboards that contain data from multiple clients, where only one client's data should be visible at a time.

In all of these cases, the information that needs to be hidden lives inside the same browser window as the information being presented. Tab-level sharing does not solve it. Zoom blur does not solve it. You need element-level control.

The bottom line

Screen sharing privacy is not a feature that any single video conferencing platform has solved well. Zoom, Teams, and Meet are built to share content, not selectively hide parts of it. OBS can do it, but the setup overhead and lack of element awareness make it impractical for most people.

If you work in a browser -- and in 2026, that includes most knowledge workers -- the most practical approach is a browser extension that understands web page structure and lets you blur specific elements with a click. That is what ContextBlur is built for.

It takes 30 seconds to install and about the same to set up your first blur. There is a free tier, and it works with every video conferencing tool that exists. No accounts, no complex configuration, no performance hit.

The next time you have a screen sharing session with sensitive data on the page, you will be glad you set it up ahead of time.

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