Can you share your screen without anyone recording it? You can choose a service that does not make a recording. You cannot guarantee that an invited viewer will not make a copy on their own device.
Linkside makes the first promise, not the second. Linkside has no recording feature and creates no recording, transcript, or media archive. Once a viewer can see your screen, however, you still have to trust that person. Knowing where that boundary sits helps you decide what to share.
What Linkside means by “no recording”
There is no recording button in the host or viewer interface. Linkside does not make a video file in the background, send the session to a recording service, transcribe the audio, or analyse what appears on screen. In-session chat is not written to a server-side chat archive either.
We built the media path around that boundary. When possible, your selected screen and audio travel directly from your browser to each viewer’s browser. Linkside’s signaling service helps the browsers establish the connection, but it does not receive the screen or audio frames.
Some networks block a direct connection. In that case, Linkside can use an encrypted TURN relay as a fallback. The relay forwards encrypted packets, but it does not hold the browsers’ media keys or turn the live stream into a recording. Linkside creates no recording on either route.
For more on the transport, read what WebRTC encryption guarantees. For the wider data picture, see what Linkside stores about a session.
What Linkside still handles during a live room
No recording does not mean that Linkside observes nothing. The service needs temporary room information to connect people. While a room is live, that includes room settings, temporary participant IDs, timestamps, and connection setup messages. A rolling log, capped at 256 setup events, lets a reconnecting browser catch up. Those events contain connection instructions, not screen or audio frames.
When operational analytics are enabled, Linkside also records limited measurements such as total joins, peak participant count, session duration, and whether a relay was used. These measurements contain no screen or audio frames.
Ending a room makes it unavailable to participants. The temporary room record then has a five-minute tombstone, but that is not a promise of deletion at exactly five minutes: cleanup occurs on the next lifecycle check after the tombstone expires. There is no post-session recording, transcript, or chat archive to open later.
How to limit what other people can capture
Linkside does not record the session. You still choose what to show and who gets to watch.
- Create a room and send the invite only to the people who need it.
- In the browser’s display picker, choose the narrowest surface the task needs. Pick a tab or window instead of your whole screen when that is enough.
- Check the chosen surface for notifications, account details, unrelated tabs, and anything else you do not intend to show.
- Tell viewers when the material should not be copied or kept. That sets an expectation; it is not a technical control.
- Stop sharing as soon as the walkthrough is finished, then end the room.
These steps reduce accidental exposure and keep the audience deliberate. They do not make copying impossible. Linkside handles its part by creating no recording of its own.
Why you still need to trust each viewer
Once a viewer’s browser displays the stream, Linkside cannot control what happens on that device. The viewer could use screen-capture software or point a separate camera at the display. Either method can preserve something that Linkside itself never recorded.
WebRTC encryption protects the media while it travels between browsers. It cannot take access away from a viewer after their browser decrypts and displays the stream. A direct peer-to-peer path does not change that fact.
The honest claim is “Linkside does not record.” Claiming that recording is impossible would be false because Linkside does not control invited people or their devices.
When Linkside fits
Linkside fits when you want the screen-sharing service itself to create no recording, transcript, or content archive. It is a good match for a quick walkthrough, private demo, or short troubleshooting session with people you trust.
It is not the right tool when the job requires a recording, a transcript, or proof that every guest was technically prevented from making a copy. Linkside has no setting that provides that proof.
This boundary is part of a broader product choice: no accounts, persistent rooms, or session history. See what else Linkside deliberately leaves out. Linkside does not record your session; you decide which people and which part of your screen to trust with it.