Header image: Fotis Fotopoulos - Unsplash. Screenshots throughout this page are mine.
You’re already familiar with not sharing your main display when screensharing in a Zoom/WebEx/Teams video call, right?
If you are, presumably you know one or all of the ways to find your display settings to use multiple monitors. If not, it’s here:
How to use multiple monitors in Windows | Microsoft Support
If that’s not enough of an explanation, click here to search for more explanations.
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If, like me, you’re on a budget but want to buy additional monitors, consider checking charity shops or, if buying online, refurbished stock (that’s how I tend to buy all my devices)
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…and that’s not all explained in the tutorials linked above.
Image 1: Screenshot of my computer’s main display, where I’ve right-clicked to select Display settings
As you can see in the screenshot above, my computer’s main display shows quite a lot about me and my set-up, and I don’t want to share all that (and any pop-up notifications that might appear) during a videocall, so I choose to share a secondary (or tertiary/quaternary/etc.) display, and drag anything I want to share in the call onto that screen.
But even then I do not want to expose as much as the basic desktop and taskbar on the main display show, so after making sure my Display settings are set how I want them, I go to my Taskbar settings:
I right-click on the taskbar to go to Taskbar settings:
Image 2: Screenshot showing the bottom right corner of my computer’s main display, where I’ve right-clicked on the taskbar to select Taskbar settings
Instead of right-clicking the taskbar, you can also go to Settings > Personalisation > Taskbar, but either way this gets you to a long list of options. Scroll down:
Image 3: Screenshot of Windows 11’s Personalisation settings for the Taskbar
The setting to control more of what shows on your secondary (or tertiary/quaternary/etc.) display is this one:
Image 4: Zoomed-in screenshot of Windows 11’s Personalisation settings for the Taskbar
By choosing to show my taskbar apps only on the taskbar of where the window is open, my secondary display’s taskbar now isn’t the same as on my main display, but only shows the apps open on that particular display:
Image 5: Screenshot of my computer’s secondary display, where the taskbar only shows icons for those apps open on that display.