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When you share your screen during a therapy session, your face matters. A client watching a safety plan, an EMDR target image, or a worksheet shouldn’t lose sight of you in the same moment you’re handing them something emotionally weighted. Rivet’s screen share keeps your camera visible to the client as a corner tile throughout the share. This is the single most important way Rivet’s video differs from generic meeting tools.

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How it works

When you tap Share Screen in the toolbar, a small picker appears with two choices:
  • Share Screen — opens your browser’s native screen picker (Chrome, Safari, Firefox each have their own). You pick a window, a tab, or your whole screen. The share starts.
  • Whiteboard — mounts the in-session whiteboard instead of a real screen share. See Whiteboard.
When the share is live, the client’s view becomes: 
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                              │
│                                ┌──────────┐  │
│                                │   You    │  │  ← your cam, corner tile
│                                └──────────┘  │
│                                              │
│       Your shared content                    │
│       (main stage, full-bleed)               │
│                                              │
│                                              │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Both video streams run at the same time over a single connection. The client browser receives the two video tracks and routes them — the screen track to the main stage, your camera track to the corner tile. Your own view stays mostly the same — you see the client’s video as the main stage, your own camera and a small preview of what you’re sharing.

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Why multitrack matters clinically

In Zoom, Meet, and most generic meeting tools (until very recently), when the host shares their screen, the host’s camera is replaced by the shared content. The client sees the screen but loses the host’s face entirely for the duration of the share. For a therapist sharing a safety plan with a client in crisis, that’s not ideal. For an EMDR session sharing a target image, it can be actively counterproductive — EMDR depends on the therapist’s continuous co-regulating presence and clients can read the disappearance as withdrawal. Rivet adds the screen as a second video stream while keeping the camera stream alive. Your client sees both.

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Bandwidth and quality during a share

While you’re sharing, the camera encoder is automatically capped at a lower resolution (the face tile is small — full HD on it would be wasteful) so the screen share gets uplink headroom. You won’t see the difference visually because the corner tile is small. When you stop the share, the camera goes back to its full resolution automatically.

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What happens on slower or older browsers

If the receiver’s browser doesn’t support multitrack (rare in 2026 — mostly very old Safari versions), Rivet detects this and silently falls back to the older single-track behavior: the screen replaces the camera for the duration of the share. The fallback isn’t an error — the client still sees the share, they just lose your face for those minutes. Most sessions never hit this path.

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Stopping a share

Three ways to stop:
  • Tap Share Screen again in the toolbar. Most reliable.
  • Tap “Stop sharing” in your browser’s native sharing bar. The black bar at the top of your screen Chrome/Safari put up while you’re sharing. Same result.
  • End the call. Tearing down the call tears down the share.
Once the share stops, the layout snaps back to standard — client’s video fills the main stage, your camera returns to its corner tile, your camera resolution returns to full.

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What’s safe to share

The screen-share data flows over the same end-to-end encrypted WebRTC channel as the audio and video. It’s not relayed through a server in plain. It’s also not recorded. A few practical caveats:
  • Anything visible on the shared screen is visible to the client. Close email, hide notifications, and pick a specific window rather than your whole screen if you want to be precise.
  • Notifications that pop up during a share are visible. Turn on Do Not Disturb (macOS Focus / Windows Focus Assist) before sharing.
  • System audio is not shared. Rivet shares video only — if you play a sound on your computer, the client doesn’t hear it. If you need to share audio for a clinical reason (e.g. a guided meditation track), use the EMDR auditory bilateral stimulation instead, which is purpose-built for in-session audio.

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What’s not in scope

  • Tab audio. Some tools let you share a Chrome tab including the audio playing in it. Rivet doesn’t (the use case for therapy is narrow, and the cross-browser story is unreliable).
  • Annotation on top of the share. Use the whiteboard if you want a drawable surface — it’s the same workflow.
  • Client initiating a share. The Share Screen button is host-only. Clients can’t share their screen back to you. If a future session shape needs this (collaborative review of a worksheet, etc.), it’ll be a practitioner-side opt-in toggle.

Whiteboard

The drawable alternative to a screen share.

The session workspace

Where the Share Screen button lives.

EMDR overview

Bilateral stimulation in the same session.