How to Split Screen on Discord

Besides being a great gaming chat app, Discord also lets you share your video or your screen with up to nine other people. It’s slowly, but surely, becoming a Skype alternative geared towards gamers.

Contributing to that is the fact that you can now switch from sharing video to sharing your screen with just a single click. Stick with us to see how you can do this with your select few people.

Enabling Your Video

To be able to share whatever your webcam is recording, you first need to enable it. Here’s how you can do this:

1. Go to user settings.
   
2. Locate the “Voice & Video” tab on the left side of the screen.
   
3. At the bottom of this menu lies Video Settings. The “Test Video” button allows you to see if the camera is working and if you’re looking prepared and not breaking a sweat.
   
4. Just below the Test Video button is the “Camera“ dropdown menu. Here’s where you need to select your camera.
   

Note: If you’re using Discord from your web browser, make sure that camera access is enabled there. The notification that asks you to enable the camera will pop up automatically as long as you haven’t prevented it from appearing earlier.

You should now have a functional video setup. Before starting a video call, though, you need to create a group with the people you’re calling, unless you have one already. After that, it’s all about setting up the video call parameters.

How to Split Your Screen

Now that you’ve verified that your equipment is working properly, it’s time to get streaming.

Start Sharing

This is really simple to do:

1. Open the Channel you want to stream to in the Server
2. Click on ‘Screen’ in the lower left-hand corner.
   
3. Select ‘Screens’ in the pop-up window that appears. This option allows you to show your full screen to others in Discord. You can also choose to show only one application if you’d like.
   
4. Click ‘Go Live.’
   

Your stream will appear in a small window while you still have access to most of your screen’s real estate. If you’d like to multitask without anyone knowing, all you need to do is choose the option to show only one application on your device.

If you’re using video and screen sharing you can click on the ‘Focus’ icon in the upper right-hand corner to change the layout of your Discord stream.

Open a Pop-Out Window

Lastly, you can use the ‘Pop Out’ icon in the lower right-hand corner to separate your streaming screen from Discord.

This is perfect if you have multiple monitors because you can game or share on one screen and monitor your video feed in the next.

Video Call Settings

After starting a video call, you’ll notice that there are quite a few additional options that can enhance the chat experience:

Share What You Want

As mentioned above, you can choose if you want to share your video or your screen by clicking a single button. At the bottom of the screen, there are two buttons: one with a monitor and an arrow inside of it, and one with a camera.

If you want to share your screen, which you can do by clicking on the former, but have multiple of them, you will get to select which screen you’d like to share. Also, if you prefer just sharing the screen of an open app, you can do that as well.

Even if you want to go to screen sharing from application sharing and back, Discord has you covered. You can do this during screen sharing by clicking on its icon.

Some More Options

Discord has even more options to help you use it to its fullest potential. Another thing you can do while in a video call is expanding the view down, or in other words, expanding the chat so it takes as much Discord’s space as it can.

To focus on a certain person’s screen or video, you can click on their window. This will make the app focus on them and push everyone else to the side.

Speaking of focus, there are two arrows going in opposite directions in the bottom-right corner. This is the full screen button. Click it to expand the call so it occupies the whole screen. To exit full screen view, press the Escape button.

After that, you can also mute your own audio or go into settings in the middle of the call. You can find these options to the right of the “Leave Call” button.

Finally, Discord also lets you view other chats while in the middle of a call, moving the call to another window, letting you multitask easily.

Audio Sharing

Discord has also introduced audio sharing, so you can share your audio when you’re sharing your screen but not your webcam video. All you need to do is enable the “Sound” option when commencing screen sharing. However, this feature doesn’t always work, as there are issues that prevent it from functioning. They can be solved, however, so here are some of the solutions:

1. An antivirus may have flagged Discord mistakenly, so see if that’s your case. If not, you can still try disabling the antivirus temporarily and see if that helps.
2. Test your audio settings. In the “Voice & Video” tab of your user settings, look for “Voice settings.” There’s an input device dropdown menu. See if you’ve chosen the right device here.
3. Another option within the same tab is “Push to Talk.” Switching to or from it to “Voice Activity” might be what you were looking for.
4. Starting the program as an administrator often solves this issue. To do this, right-click on the icon you usually start Discord from and choose “Run as administrator.” To avoid having to do this every time you start it, choose “Properties” instead. Go to the “Compatibility” tab and tick the checkbox that says “Run this program as an administrator.” Don’t forget to click on “OK” and confirm the changes.
5. Another common bug in Discord is related to the full-screen view. To see if this is the problem, avoid running your games and applications in full screen.
6. Update or reinstall Discord. If all else fails, this is what you should do. It’d help to have tried most of the other less drastic options first, though.
7. Contact Discord. This site will take you to the “Submit a request” form, where you can report an issue or bug.

Level Up Your Chats

Discord has truly become an instant messaging app to look out for. Hopefully, this helps you make it even more enjoyable and personalized to your own needs.

How do you like Discord’s video chat capabilities? Have you ever had any issues with it? How did you overcome them? Share your gaming experiences with us in the comments below.