Personal productivityOriginal Reddit post

Raybeam - A better way to screen share on macOS

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Links Website: https://raybeam.live App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/raybeam/id6762012061 Problem A few years ago I got my first ultra-wide monitor. It was a 49" Samsung monitor. I work as a software engineer, and in my line of work I need to screen share a lot. This almost immediately became a problem due to the size of the monitor. I would either need to get a second display just for screen sharing, share one window at a time (which required me to constantly stop/start sharing to select the new window), or share my entire screen making it difficult for other participants in the call to see what I'm doing due to the size of my display. I wanted a solution to this. At the time, I was on Windows. So, I wrote a very basic application and released it for free on GitHub. This was called "FrameCast". It had a lot of issues, including usability issues. But at the time, it got the job done. After a while I moved away from the ultra wide monitor, so I stopped using the application. Fast forward to 2026 when I again purchased a new Ultra Wide monitor. This time, using macOS. I ran into the same problem again, and when I loaded up my old FrameCast application, it no longer functioned properly on macOS. This led me to creating Raybeam. What is Raybeam Raybeam is a native macOS menu bar application that aims to make screen sharing more accessible for users. It features: A draggable, resizable region of your screen that can be shared in video conferencing applications. The ability to filter out specific applications from being included in the shared region (this is useful for keeping things like Messages or Discord out of the shared feed, even when they are visible on your screen) I believe this is one of the key features that sets this application apart from other similar applications. The ability to notate the shared region with hand drawn notation. Customizable hot-keys for quickly changing what region of the screen is being shared, toggling the live feed and quickly toggling "draw" mode. Compare I'm only aware of one similar application to this, which is AnyFrame. Having purchased and tested AnyFrame, it seems to be very laggy when dragging the overlay around, doesn't offer anything similar to Raybeams "hidden apps" feature, and has a much higher barrier to entry with a $70 lifetime license. None of these are issues with Raybeam. Pricing I've tried to remain fair with the pricing on this application. I see far too many applications being released with subscription based pricing models that I don't personally believe are reasonable considering the application that's being offered. I didn't want to do that with Raybeam. This application is priced at $9.99 for a lifetime license on the Apple App Store. About Me My name is Nathan. I have been working in software for around 15 years and normally focus on open-source software with my free time. I have many well received OSS projects across my GitHub. Raybeam is my first paid application. I'm excited to share it with everyone! You can connect with me on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanial-fiscaletti-91120b208/ Github: https://github.com/nathan-fiscaletti AI Disclaimer While posting an AI disclaimer isn't required from what I understand in the PCP standards, I felt it would be reasonable to be fully transparent here. Parts of this application that were aided by AI include: The website (all video content was created and edited by hand without the help of AI) and some aspects of the applications user-interface and the applications icon / branding (I'm not much of a designer myself, I'm a back-end engineer.) The core functionality of the application was written by me in Swift.

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u/waharris007

I love finding apps that solve one very specific problem! I just purchased and will try it out on my next call. Great idea, man. And kudos for not making it a subscription . I am so SICK of having to subscribe to everything!

u/Altruistic_Paper4636

And purchased. This is an insta-buy for me, given the use case.

u/RicoSaas

finally someone tackled this properly, ultrawide screen sharing has been a pain forever

u/MediocreAnywhere1221OPReply

I’m glad you like it! Thank you for the kind words :)

u/treningi

looks very fine. I think you'll benefit from adding the voice over to the promo video.

u/gogosomewhere

I have this exact problem and was going to build something to solve this. Good to see you built a solution - I will check it out, hope it works as expected

u/MediocreAnywhere1221OPReply

Thank you! Please let me know how it goes, I'm excited to hear your feedback! And feel free to leave a review on the app store as well if you'd like to

u/Itshardtofindaname4Reply

Isn’t that the best? You think you’ve gotta build something yourself and someone’s already done it and you don’t need to spend the requisite time doing it and can focus elsewhere, definitely a win in my book

u/RedditSylus

can you just share your whole desktop? also i have 5 monitors, can I share anyone during screen share and share other screens when on the same screen share? I use microsoft teams now but I am making video calls and you can share 1-what every screens so I share different screens but if i share the wrong screen i just stop sharing and share the correct monitor but I am on a video call. I am not sure how your works If I am sharing would i have to disconnect the share and share again. looks nice though.

u/MediocreAnywhere1221OPReply

This application shares a "region" of your screen that you select. The region that you are sharing can be resized, repositioned (across any monitor) or re-selected at any time and the live feed being sent to your video conferencing application will stay in sync with it. One of the main ideas is that you shouldn't ever feel the need to "re-share" your screen on your video conferencing application.

u/irgendwaaas

Looks pretty good, might replace PortalBox for me. Any chance to try it before buying?

u/MediocreAnywhere1221OPReply

Unfortunately, I do not have a trial set up currently. It’s something I’m considering but haven’t made a decision on yet.

u/RedditSylus

I am curious about the screen sharing part. Do you just send an email or text to someone to share screen or do both parties need to have this app installed. How does this process work?

u/MediocreAnywhere1221OPReply

This application works together with your regular video conferencing software (slack, teams, etc.). Once you have a region selected, you share it as you would share any other window.

u/ContextSpiritual9068

the hidden apps filter is such a smart idea. been screen sharing with Discord floating behind my work stuff for years and just... hoping nobody notices lol. $9.99 lifetime is a steal for this

u/loookashow

I don't use an ultra-wide monitor (I have two small ones), but when colleagues share something from their giant monitors, I can't see it without a microscope. Great idea.

u/horatiobenitez

Such a niche app! Love it, even though I would personally have little to no use for it!

u/Apprehensive_Egg592

This is neat. I have a wide monitor and I would need to move things around to hide everytime before I share my screen so I don’t accidentally alt tab to open it during the share lol

u/Federal-Translator60

I bought it, also enabled the screen recording permission but Slack or Zoom cannot see that app for me to select despite I selected Start Streaming.

u/balcsida

I was using BetterDisplay to create a virtual display for it, but that is a pain to handle. Does it create a virtual screen? Because if yes, I could even use this during live presentations, simply stream the virtual screen to the physical one using BetterDisplay

u/hridiv

This looks really useful and very easy to use! And also, I would be interested in checking out FrameCast on my windows too!