How to share a video on Zoom without your audience seeing the playback controls
Short answer: the controls appear because your video player draws the scrubber and buttons on top of the video itself — so any window you share contains both. You can reduce it by playing full screen on a second display and turning off full-screen controls, but the controls reappear whenever your mouse touches that screen. The only complete fix is a player that puts its controls in a separate window from the video.
If you present recorded video on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or Webex, you have probably watched this happen in real time: you scrub back ten seconds to re-show a moment, and every person on the call sees your progress bar, your buttons, and your cursor. It looks unpolished, and there is no setting in most players that fixes it.
Here is why it happens, what you can do for free, and where the free options run out.
Why the controls show up at all
Screen sharing captures a window or a display exactly as it is drawn. Nearly every video player composites its transport controls as an overlay on the video surface rather than in a separate window. So when you share the player window, you are sharing the video and the overlay together. There is no way to share one layer and not the other.
Auto-hide helps, but it is a timer, not a solution. The moment you move the mouse, seek, pause, or adjust volume, the overlay comes back — and those are precisely the moments during a presentation when you need to touch the controls.
The free workarounds, and how far they get you
QuickTime Player
- Open QuickTime → Settings → General and turn off the display of full-screen controls.
- Play the video full screen on a second display, and share only that display.
- Under System Settings → Accessibility, the "fade panel after inactivity" option shortens how long the overlay lingers.
This gets you most of the way there for straight playback. It falls apart the instant you need to scrub, because you have to move your cursor onto the shared display to do it.
VLC
VLC can also run full screen on a second display with a minimal interface, and it handles far more file formats than QuickTime. The same limitation applies: the controls live over the video, so interacting with them means revealing them.
Zoom's own settings
These do not hide your controls, but they fix the problem people usually hit next:
- Tick Optimize for video clip in the Share Screen dialog — this is what resolves choppy, low-framerate playback for your viewers.
- Tick Share computer audio, or nobody hears the video at all.
Keynote
Worth knowing: Keynote already solves this for slides. Its presenter display runs in a separate window from the slideshow, so you share the slideshow window and keep your notes and controls private. That is the right model — it just does not exist for video files.
The approach that actually solves it
The structural fix is to separate the two layers into two windows: one window containing nothing but the video frame, and a second window holding every control. You share the first and keep the second on your own screen. Your cursor, your scrubbing, and your pausing all happen somewhere your audience cannot see.
That is what Sidewing does. It is a macOS video player built specifically for screen sharing and presenting. The video window has nothing drawn over it at any point, so it stays clean whether you are playing, paused, or seeking.
It also handles the things that tend to break presentations right after you have solved the controls problem:
- Multiple files as one continuous video — drop in a queue and it plays straight through, with no gap to fumble through between clips.
- Frame-by-frame stepping — for when you need to land on an exact moment.
- Precise scrubbing — instead of the vague, snapping seek most players give you.
Side by side
| QuickTime | VLC | Sidewing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Controls hidden from your screen share | Only while untouched | Only while untouched | Always — separate window |
| Scrub without revealing controls | No | No | Yes |
| Play several files continuously | No | Playlist, with gaps | Yes |
| Frame-by-frame stepping | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Price | Free | Free | Free 7 days, then $19.99 once |
QuickTime and VLC are good software and free. If straight playback with no seeking is all you need, they will do the job. Sidewing is for people who present often enough that the seeking matters.
Download Sidewing on the Mac App Store
macOS. Free for 7 days, then a one-time $19.99 — no subscription.
Common questions
Can I hide the QuickTime controls completely?
Not while interacting with the video. You can turn off full-screen controls in QuickTime's settings and shorten the auto-hide delay in Accessibility settings, which hides them during uninterrupted playback. Any mouse movement over that display brings them back.
Why does my shared video look choppy on Zoom?
That is a separate issue from the controls. Tick "Optimize for video clip" in Zoom's Share Screen dialog, and "Share computer audio" so your viewers hear the audio track.
Does this work with Google Meet, Teams and Webex?
Yes. The technique is not specific to any conferencing app — you are simply sharing a window that contains only video, so it behaves the same everywhere.
Do I need two monitors?
No. Because the controls are in their own window rather than over the video, you can share just the video window and keep the control window elsewhere on the same screen. Two displays make it more comfortable, but they are not required.
Is there a free way to do this properly?
Not that we have found on macOS. The full-screen-on-a-second-display approach with QuickTime or VLC is the best free option, and it works until you need to seek.