How to share part of your screen in Zoom, Teams, or OBS
You want to share one corner of your screen — a dashboard, a single app, one section of an ultrawide — without putting your whole desktop, notifications, and other windows on the call. On Windows, that’s harder than it should be. Here’s what actually works.
Can Zoom or Teams share just a region natively?
Not really. Both let you share your whole screen or a specific window, but neither has a built-in “share this rectangle” region tool — it’s a long-standing, heavily-requested gap. Sharing a single window helps only if the content you want happens to live in exactly one app window.
The common workarounds
- Share a single application window. Works when your content is one window, but not for “a region with whatever’s underneath it” (e.g. part of an ultrawide with several apps).
- Virtual-camera region tools. Some utilities expose a chosen region as a fake webcam you select as your camera. It works, but it routes your screen through the camera pipeline, which can look softer and complicate layouts.
- Crop after the fact. Viewers can pin/zoom a shared screen on their end, but you can’t force it, and you’re still broadcasting everything.
Sharing a single zone with VirtualZones
VirtualZones takes a different approach: it exposes one zone of your monitor as its own window. In Zoom, Teams, or OBS you open the normal share picker and choose the window titled “Virtual Zones - Sharing Zone N” — and you share exactly that region, with whatever’s underneath it, instead of your whole screen.
Because it’s a real window in the native picker (not a webcam), the quality is your normal screen-share quality, and it composites naturally.
| Approach | Shares an arbitrary region? | Uses native screen-share (not webcam)? |
|---|---|---|
| Share whole screen | No — shares everything | Yes |
| Share one window | Only if content is one window | Yes |
| Virtual-camera region tool | Yes | No (camera pipeline) |
| VirtualZones single-zone share | Yes | Yes |
How to do it
- Run VirtualZones and make sure your zones are set up (see getting started).
- Toggle the share for the zone you want with Ctrl+Alt+1 (or 2, 3…), or from the tray menu.
- In Zoom/Teams/OBS, open Share and pick the “Virtual Zones - Sharing Zone N” window.
- A dashed frame marks the shared zone for you only — viewers don’t see it. Press the same hotkey again to stop.
Full walkthrough: sharing a zone in Zoom, Teams, or OBS.
Try it
Download VirtualZones free for 7 days and share exactly the part of your screen you mean to — nothing more.