How to Share Your Screen on Instagram Live

Sharing your screen on Instagram Live is one of the most effective ways to make your broadcasts more dynamic and interactive. This guide will walk you through exactly how to do it, step-by-step, along with creative ideas for how to use this feature to engage your audience and build your brand.

Why Share Your Screen on Instagram Live?

Going live is all about creating a personal, unedited connection with your audience. While a simple Q&A or chat is great, adding visuals by sharing your screen takes your Live sessions to another level. Suddenly, you're not just talking, you're showing. This small change transforms a simple broadcast into a visual presentation, a tutorial, a product demo, or a collaborative experience.

For brands and creators, this means you can:

• Educate More Effectively: Tutorials become infinitely clearer when you can show slides, charts, or images to illustrate your points.
• Boost Engagement: Sharing user-generated content, viewer questions, or funny memes makes your audience feel seen and part of the conversation.
• Showcase Your Work: Artists can display portfolios, coaches can share testimonials, and businesses can demo digital products or highlight positive reviews.
• Break Up the Monotony: Switching between your face and shared media keeps the energy high and holds viewers' attention longer.

At its core, screen sharing turns your Instagram Live from a monologue into a multimedia experience, making your content more valuable and memorable for your followers.

Important Note: How Instagram's Screen Share Actually Works

Before we get to the steps, it’s important to understand a key limitation of Instagram's current screen-sharing feature. Unlike screen sharing on a platform like Zoom or FaceTime, you cannot share a live view of your entire phone screen or navigate between apps in real time.

Instead, Instagram Live allows you to share photos and videos that are already saved to your phone's camera roll. Think of it less as a "live screen mirror" and more as a "media sharing" feature. You're essentially creating a picture-in-picture effect where the media from your camera roll becomes the main screen, and your camera feed appears in a smaller window.

Knowing this helps you prepare. Assemble all the visuals you want to share - screenshots, infographics, photos, pre-recorded video clips - and save them to your phone before you go live. This ensures you're ready to go and won't be scrambling for content during your broadcast.

How to Share Your Screen on Instagram Live: A Step-by-Step Guide

Ready to give it a try? The process is refreshingly simple. Here’s exactly what to do, from starting your broadcast to ending your screen share.

Step 1: Start Your Instagram Live Session

First things first, you need to be live. You can't set up the screen share beforehand.

1. Open the Instagram app and swipe right from your feed, or tap the plus (+) icon at the top and select "Live."
2. Before starting, feel free to add a title for your Live. Tap the title icon on the left to let followers know what your broadcast is about. This gives context to people joining mid-stream.
3. When you’re ready, tap the Live button at the bottom of the screen. Instagram will do a quick connection check, and then you'll be live to your followers.

Step 2: Access the Media Sharing Feature

Once you're live and have a few viewers, you can start sharing your screen.

1. Look at the menu of options at the bottom of your screen.
2. Tap the media sharing icon. It looks like a picture with a play button on it, typically located on the right side of the toolbar.
3. This will open up your phone’s camera roll directly within the Live interface.

Step 3: Select the Photo or Video You Want to Share

Now you'll see a preview of all the content in your phone's media library.

1. Scroll through your photos and videos to find the one you want to display. The content you've saved most recently will appear at the top, so it’s a good idea to have your materials prepped and saved right before you go live.
2. Tap on the photo or video you want to share.
3. Instantly, the selected media will fill the screen for your viewers. Your face will appear in a small, moveable window on top of the shared content, so you can still talk to your audience.

Step 4: Managing Your Screen Share

While sharing, you're still in control. You can drag your video thumbnail to any corner of the screen so you're not covering up an important part of the image you're sharing. To switch to a different photo or video, simply tap the media sharing icon again and select a new file from your camera roll. The transition is seamless for your viewers.

Step 5: How to Stop Sharing Your Screen

When you’re done showing your visual, you can easily go back to a full-screen video of yourself.

1. Tap the same media sharing icon at the bottom of the screen again.
2. This time, you'll see an option to stop sharing (sometimes it looks like a circle with a slash through it, or simply tapping the icon again deselects the media). Tapping this will remove the shared photo or video.
3. Your Instagram Live will return to the standard full-screen talking head view, and you can continue your broadcast or end it.

10 Creative Ways to Use Screen Sharing on Instagram Live

Now that you know how it works, what should you actually do with it? The possibilities are endless, but here are some powerful and engaging ideas for different types of creators and brands.

1. Run a Presentation or Mini-Workshop: As a coach, consultant, or educator, you can create simple slides (even text on a colored background) and save them as images. Display them one by one as you talk through a topic.
2. Host a "Review My Profile" Session: Have followers send you their profiles, take a screenshot, and offer live feedback and tips during your broadcast.
3. Analyze Data or News: Share screenshots of interesting charts, graphs, or news headlines and give your live commentary and analysis. This works great for finance, marketing, or tech niches.
4. Demo a Digital Product or App: Take screen recordings or screenshots of your app, software, or digital template and walk your audience through how it works.
5. Answer Questions Visually: Screenshot viewer questions from your DMs or Story stickers. Put the question on screen so everyone knows what you're answering, which is especially helpful for people who join late.
6. Showcase User-Generated Content (UGC): A fantastic way to build community goodwill. Share photos from customers using your product or from followers participating in a challenge.
7. Do a Before-and-After Reveal: Perfect for photographers, designers, fitness coaches, and artists. Show the "before" image, talk about your process, and then switch to the "after."
8. Walk Through Your Website: Take screenshots of key pages on your website (like a sales page or a new blog post) and guide your audience through it, pointing out important details.
9. React to Memes or Viral Content: A simple and fun format. Save a handful of funny or relevant memes related to your niche and share your live reactions.
10. Run a Flash Sale: Create a graphic with a special discount code that is only available to live viewers and share it on screen for a limited time.

Best Practices for a Smooth IG Live Screen Share

Running a successful live session is about more than just knowing which buttons to press. Follow these tips to keep your audience engaged and your broadcast looking professional.

• Prepare Your Content in Advance: Don't look for photos on the fly. Create a dedicated album on your phone with all the media you plan to share and put them in order. This saves time and makes you look organized.
• Test It Out: Go live on a private "test" account first. Practice switching between your camera and shared media to get comfortable with the controls.
• Use High-Quality Visuals: Ensure any screenshots, photos, or graphics you share are high-resolution and easy to read on a mobile screen. Avoid blurry images or text that's too small.
• Promote Your Live Ahead of Time: Let your audience know you'll be going live and what you'll be sharing. Post in your Stories and Feed. This builds anticipation and can significantly increase your live viewership.
• Don't Forget to Engage: It’s easy to focus only on what you’re sharing. Remember to keep an eye on the comments and questions rolling in. Address your viewers by name and acknowledge their feedback.
• Set Your Phone to "Do Not Disturb": The last thing you want is a call or notification banner popping up over your screen while you're live. Put your phone in Do Not Disturb mode before you start your broadcast.

Final Thoughts

Sharing your screen on Instagram Live is a simple but incredibly powerful tool. By incorporating visuals from your camera roll, you can create more valuable, engaging, and professional broadcasts that capture and hold your audience's attention much more effectively than a standard live video.

A great Live is just one piece of the puzzle. Once you've created that amazing connection with your audience, keeping the momentum going is just as important. For our own social media content, we’ve found that the best way to leverage a successful live event is to have a solid content plan ready for the following days. This is where tools like Postbase become so helpful. We built its visual calendar to give you a bird's-eye view of your entire content schedule, letting you easily plan follow-up posts, Reels reviewing highlights from your Live, and Stories to keep the conversation going, all from one clean dashboard. It helps you turn that live engagement into lasting community growth.