Introducing Curtains
Curtains puts the windows you choose on one canvas that you share once, in any meeting app. Here is the problem it solves and what it does.
Screen sharing in most meeting apps is all or nothing. You share one window, or you share your whole desktop.
That works until a call needs two things at once. You stop sharing the editor, dig through the share picker for the browser, share that, and do it all again when someone asks to see the editor. Sooner or later you give up and share the whole desktop, and everyone on the call sees your notifications, your chat and whatever else happens to be open.
Curtains is a separate app with one job: screen sharing. You pick the windows you want to show, and Curtains arranges them on one canvas, a single window called Curtains Presenter. You share that window in your meeting app once. Everything after that happens in Curtains.
One window, several apps
The meeting app only ever sees one ordinary window, so Curtains works in any meeting app that can share a window: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Slack huddles and others. There are no plugins or integrations to set up.
During the call you can add a window, remove one or change the order, and the share in your meeting app keeps running. Windows you didn’t pick never reach the canvas, so a notification that pops up on your screen stays on your screen.
Layouts
Curtains has four ways to arrange what you share:
- Grid places the windows side by side and keeps each one’s shape.
- Focus + filmstrip gives one window most of the canvas and shows the others as thumbnails. Click a thumbnail to swap.
- Follow active shows whichever shared window you’re working in, large, with the others in a strip of small live tiles along the top.
- Free lets you drag and resize each window yourself.
Drawing and blur
You can draw over shared windows with a pen, a highlighter, an arrow or a laser pointer. By default, ink fades a few seconds after you finish a stroke, so the canvas clears itself. Switch to persistent ink when you want marks to stay. You can draw on the live preview in Curtains Studio, the control window, or from a small toolbar under each shared window.
Blur hides part of a window, or all of it. Drag a rectangle over a customer’s email address in a dashboard, and viewers see a blur where it was. Blur is applied before the canvas is put together, so the hidden content never reaches the share.
Paused, as a green room
Pick your windows and Studio shows the real canvas before anything is shared, so you can arrange windows and place blur first. When it looks right, Go Live. Sessions started from a combo start Paused: your meeting app shows a neutral holding card until you Go Live. Switch back to Paused whenever you need a private moment, and viewers see the holding card instead.
Ready when the call starts
Curtains notices when you join a call and opens Curtains Presenter in the background, so it’s already in the list when you click Share screen. It checks this on your computer, by asking whether a meeting app is using the microphone or has a meeting window open. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.
Trying it
Curtains runs on macOS and Windows, and it’s free for up to 2 apps at a time. Every install starts with 14 days of Pro, with no account. Pro shares up to 6 apps, adds custom backgrounds and lets you turn the badge off, billed yearly or paid once with Lifetime.
If Curtains saves you one trip through the share picker on your next call, it has done its job.