When you are sharing your screen with others in a Zoom meeting, the audio on your computer is muted by default. Zoom allows you to use screen sharing to share audio with others. This is useful if you want to watch YouTube videos with others, or if you want to play music during a break in a meeting.
If you’ve never done this before, this guide will show you how to share audio on Zoom. We’ll also show how to show a YouTube video with audio to other Zoom meeting participants, and how to share music from Spotify with your audience.
Table of Contents
How to Use Screen Sharing to Share Computer Audio at Zoom for Windows or Mac
To share computer audio in a Zoom call, you need to open the app and start a new meeting. You don’t need any other participants to start sharing your computer audio in Zoom. This can easily be set up before anyone else joins using Zoom’s screen sharing feature. The steps to use this feature are similar on Zoom for Windows and Mac.
Once you’ve started a new Zoom meeting, click the green Screen Sharing in the meeting toolbar, located in the lower half of the window. As the name suggests, this is used for screen sharing on Zoom, but you need to enable a different option every time you want to share audio on your computer.
You can now click the checkbox next to Share audio in the lower left corner of the window. This will ensure that audio from your computer is included when you share your screen. Select the app you want to share the audio with, and when you’re ready to start sharing, click in blue Repost in the lower right corner of this window.
How to adjust the sound quality of shared audio using screen sharing
Zoom allows you to share computer audio in mono and stereo quality. Since the Zoom app optimizes its settings to conserve bandwidth, the default for audio shared using screen sharing is mono. If you don’t like that, you can share higher quality audio with your Zoom meeting participants.
To achieve this, start a Zoom meeting and click Screen Sharing button. This will open a screen sharing window where you can choose down arrow next to the Share audio button. You will see a drop-down menu with two options. To share higher quality audio from your computer, select Stereo (High Fidelity). Click the checkbox next to Share audio to enable computer audio sharing on Zoom.
When you press Repost To initiate screen sharing, meeting participants can listen to music or other audio in stereo quality.
How to share audio from YouTube videos when zoomed in
When you’re using Zoom to teach or give a presentation, you might want to consider YouTube videos with your audience. You can easily do this by combining screen sharing with Zoom’s audio sharing feature.
To do this, you should first open YouTube videos on your computer. If you already have the video open in the browser, make sure that the active tab has the video you want to show using screen sharing. If it opens in a background tab, you’ll have to make an extra click, when you’re screen sharing, to open the video. You can avoid this by keeping the video in the foreground in the first place.
Then, open Zoom, start a new meeting and press Screen Sharing button. When you see the screen share window, select the YouTube video from the list of boxes and select Share audio right to buy.
Finally, you can click Repost to start watching YouTube videos with your Zoom audience via screen sharing. The video will start after you hit the play button on YouTube.
How to share audio from Spotify when zooming via screen sharing
A relaxing instrumental song can work as a great addition when you’re waiting for some people to join a meeting or when you’re taking a break during a long Zoom meeting. You can use the screen sharing feature to share audio on Zoom via Spotify also.
To do this, open Spotify on your computer and find the song you want to play. You can then start a meeting on Zoom, tap Screen Sharing and select Spotify from the list of tiles. You should remember to check Share audio in the bottom left corner and then click Repost in the bottom right corner to start screen sharing.
Finally, you can click the play button in Spotify on your computer to share the song via Zoom.
How to share audio on zoom for iPhone and iPad
You can also use the Zoom Screen Sharing feature to share audio from your iPhone or iPad. This is pretty easy to enable because the moment you start sharing your screen, the device audio from your Apple device is automatically shared with the people participating in the Zoom meeting.
So just start a new meeting on Zoom for iOS or iPadOS and tap the green Share content button. You can choose Screen from the list of options, then tap Broadcast start to start screen sharing from Zoom for iPhone or iPad. When you do this, you’ll see a blue button labeled Device Audio Sharing: Onmeans you’re sharing audio on Zoom from your iPhone or iPad.
To stop sharing audio, tap red Stop sharing button. This will end screen sharing during the Zoom session.
How To Stop Sharing Computer Audio When Zooming In
When you’re done sharing your screen on Zoom, you can stop sharing so your audience can pay attention to your Spotify song or YouTube video. To stop sharing your screen, click red Stop sharing at the top of the screen. This button appears next to green You are sharing your screen button.
When you click the red button, Zoom will immediately stop sharing the audio and video on your computer with other meeting participants.
How to share audio on zoom for Android
On Android, too, the Zoom screen sharing feature allows you to share the audio from your device with other participants in the meeting. The only difference is that audio sharing is disabled by default on Zoom for Android. If you want to share the sound of your phone with others during a Zoom meeting, open Zoom on Android and start a new meeting.
Once the meeting has started, tap the green Repost button located in the middle of the bottom toolbar. Scroll down a bit and press Screen. This will start screen sharing on Zoom on your Android phone. By default, Zoom takes you to the home screen and displays a floating toolbar with an option labeled Audio Sharing: Off. Tap this option once to change it to Audio sharing: On.
This will start sharing the audio with other participants. Click red Stop sharing to stop screen sharing and to stop sharing audio with other participants in a Zoom meeting.
Enhance your zoom game
Zoom may have started as a tool to make video conferencing easy, but it has since become a versatile service for presentations and teaching. You can make your Zoom meetings more accessible by turn on closed captions and transcription.
Sharing audio on Zoom is a great way to break the monotony of boring video meetings, but it’s just one of many ways to do so. What’s your favorite tip to make video calls less boring? Share your tips in the comments section below.
