Keeping your webcam off your slides in Zoom

When presenting in Zoom, if you share your screen to show Slide Show view and also want to show the webcam, the webcam window generally covers the upper-right corner of your slides. It might look OK when you’re presenting, because you can move it, but in the recording, the webcam will be back on the slides.

The solution

Zoom has recommended using Reading view, also known as “Browsed by an individual (window).” If you make this window smaller, or use Zoom’s Portion of Screen feature (which I’ll explain in a minute), you might be able to get the webcam to be off the slides in your recording. I’ve had inconsistent results with this.

But there are two problems with the Reading view options:

• It doesn’t look as polished because of the window border around your slides
• It doesn’t let you display Presenter view, where you might have your notes (I cover Presenter View here.)

So how do you both keep your webcam off your slides AND show Presenter view?

On a PC (but not on a Mac), you can use a little-known feature, the quarter-size slide show view. I have another blog post about it here: “Display a quarter-size slide show view”

Here are the steps:

1. First, turn off recording it if starts automatically, because there’s some fiddling before you get it right and you probably don’t want your audience to see it
2. To get the quarter-size slide show view, press the Alt key and click the Slide Show view icon at the bottom right of PowerPoint. It’s my understanding that this simple doesn’t work on the Mac. You cannot move or resize this view, unfortunately.
   
3. Click Share Screen in Zoom, then click the Advanced tab at the top, then choose Portion of Screen. You’ll see a green border, which may or may not be in the right place. You should be able to resize and move it to cover the quarter-sized Slide Show view.
4. Click Share in Zoom. (If you weren’t able to move and resize the green border in the previous step, you should be able to do it now.)
5. A nice benefit is that you can resize the webcam window so people can see you more easily. Do that by dragging on its lower-left corner. 
6. When you went into quarter-size Slide Show view, Presenter view should have opened. If not, right-click in the slide show view and choose Show Presenter View.
7. It will be full screen. Click the resize box at the upper right (between the minimize and close icons). Then you’ll be able to resize and move it. I put it in front of me, next to the quarter-size view, but not overlapping it. Remember, anything inside that green border will be shared!
8. Start recording again.

This time, your webcam won’t cover your slides. The slides look full screen to your audience even though you see them as quarter-sized.

What workarounds do you use when you present online?

Do you have another workaround for Zoom? Or for another online meeting service that you use? Please share it in the comments!