Remote Screen Control During Slack Calls

Can you take control of a screen in Slack?

Slack huddles let participants share a screen, watch someone else's screen and, where it is enabled, draw on a shared screen. They do not give a viewer control of the sharer's mouse and keyboard. If someone needs to click or type on your computer during a conversation, use a separate remote control or pair-programming tool alongside Slack, or a meeting app that offers control. Slack features change, so check the current Slack help documentation for your plan and app version.

Older Slack calls once included interactive screen sharing with remote control. Slack retired that feature, but many older guides still describe it. If a guide shows a control option you cannot find in your own Slack app, treat the guide as outdated.

How screen sharing in a huddle works

When you share your screen in a huddle, Slack sends a live video of your screen or a chosen window to the other participants. Viewers receive a picture only. They get no input access. The drawing feature adds marks on top of that picture so everyone can see what a viewer is pointing at. The marks do not click, type or change anything on the sharer's computer.

Remote control works on a different principle. Software on the shared computer has to accept mouse and keyboard events from another person. On macOS, these tools usually need Screen Recording permission to capture the screen and Accessibility permission to accept input. Slack itself needs Screen Recording permission even just to share. On Windows, a remote control tool may be unable to interact with administrator prompts unless the tool itself runs with elevated rights.

What you see in a huddle depends on several things: your Slack plan, whether you use the desktop or mobile app, and settings chosen by your workspace owners or admins. Confirm these on your own account before planning a session around a specific feature.

Choosing the right approach for a session

• Showing steps or reviewing a design: share your screen in the huddle and let viewers draw to point at things.
• Helping someone fix a problem on their own machine: ask them to share, guide them by voice and drawing, and let them keep control of their own computer.
• Needing to type commands or click on another person's machine: start a session in a dedicated remote control tool, and keep the huddle for audio if that tool has no voice channel.
• Pair programming with shared input: use a pair-programming app that supports shared control; some of these offer Slack integrations for starting a session from a conversation.
• Team already using Zoom or Microsoft Teams: both include options to request or give control during screen sharing, subject to their admin settings.

Before you give anyone control, close unrelated windows, pause notifications and confirm the tool is approved by your organization. While a session is active, the other person can reach anything open on your computer, including chats, email and password managers. End or revoke the session as soon as the task is finished.

Limits and related questions

A search for remote screen control in Slack often turns up third-party apps from the Slack Marketplace. These apps run separately from Slack. The vendor decides how sessions are connected, whether anything is recorded and where session data is processed. Review each vendor's privacy and security terms, and check whether your workspace admins must approve the app before you install it.

If you cannot see drawing tools on someone's shared screen, there are a few possible reasons. The sharer may have turned drawing off, an admin setting may restrict it, or your Slack client may not support it. The sharer is the person who controls whether others can draw.

Remote control is more sensitive to delay than plain viewing, because every click has to travel to the other computer and back. If a session feels slow, share a single window instead of the whole screen and close bandwidth-heavy apps. If the delay continues, switch to a tool built for remote control rather than relying on a huddle screen share.