Every major conferencing platform — Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Discord — gives you the same basic advice: share a specific window instead of your entire screen. It's good advice. It's also advice that breaks down the moment your workflow requires more than one app.
Here's the full toolkit, from free built-in methods to OS-level cloaking, for both Windows and macOS.
The Free Built-In Method
Zoom: Share Screen → Window tab → select one app.
Teams: Share → Window → select one app.
Google Meet: Present → A Window → select one app.
This is sufficient for single-app presentations. The moment you need to demo a workflow — browser to code editor to terminal — you're either adding friction (stop share, restart share) or switching to Desktop sharing and exposing everything.
Zoom's sharing guide. Teams' sharing guide.
Windows: OS-Level Window Cloaking
For workflows that require Desktop sharing or frequent app switching, you need a tool that removes specific windows from the capture stream at the compositor level.
Evanesco (Free)
GitHub: k4yt3x/Evanesco
The original open-source window cloaker. Basic GUI, portable, works with OBS, Zoom, Teams.
CaptureGuard (Free)
GitHub: xzulab/CaptureGuard
Rust-based, single EXE, clean process picker. 64-bit only.
WinHider (Free)
GitHub: aamitn/winhider
Microsoft Store + winget. Also hides from taskbar and Alt-Tab.
NoCapture (Freemium)
Adds title masking, notification shield, live preview, and routines. Full feature breakdown here.
macOS: No Native WDA Equivalent
macOS does not have a direct equivalent to Windows' WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE. macOS privacy tools use different techniques:
Stealthly ($12.99 one-time)
Auto-detects screen sharing and hides desktop clutter, Dock, menu bar, and selected apps. Uses ScreenCaptureKit filtering.
ScreenVeil
Site: screenveil.app
Creates a sanitized mirror of your screen for sharing, excluding selected apps from the output.
Hush
Menu bar app that blurs desktop clutter and background apps. Good for presentations, not true capture exclusion.
The macOS Honesty Check
No macOS tool can promise the same capture-exclusion guarantee as Windows tools because the underlying API doesn't exist in the same form. macOS tools filter at the capture-source level (ScreenCaptureKit) or use mirrored outputs. This works for most conferencing apps but may behave differently with low-level capture tools.
NoCapture's stance: We list macOS as "coming" because we're building native capture exclusion, not a blur overlay. We won't ship until it meets the same standard as our Windows implementation.
Cross-Platform Best Practices
Regardless of OS:
- Share a window when possible. It's the simplest defense.
- Pause notifications. OS Do Not Disturb + app-level notification pausing.
- Cloak sensitive apps. Password managers, banking apps, Slack DMs, email.
- Verify before sharing. Use a live preview or a test capture to confirm what's visible.
- Have a panic plan. A hotkey that switches to a safe scene or kills the share.
We covered the most expensive screen-share leaks and how they happened here. Every single one could have been prevented by technical cloaking, not just manual cleanup.
NoCapture provides OS-level window cloaking, title masking, and notification shielding for Windows. Free for two windows. Because "being careful" isn't a strategy.
