You can leave third-party-cookie blocking enabled when you use Linkside. Creating a room, joining from an invite and starting a screen share do not depend on a third-party cookie.

Cookie blocking and screen sharing are separate browser controls. One limits how sites use cookies across websites. The other asks you to choose a tab, window or screen for a live capture.

A glass bridge carries light over cookie jars isolated behind a navy lattice.

Linkside does not require an account or a cross-site sign-in. Its basic room flow works like this:

  • You create a room and send its temporary invite link.
  • Your guest opens that link as a Linkside page and joins without signing in.
  • When you select Start sharing, Linkside asks the browser to open its screen picker.
  • The browser waits for you to choose what to share.

Under the hood, Linkside sends ordinary JSON requests to its signaling service without asking the browser to include cross-site credentials. A temporary room credential is kept in sessionStorage, not a cookie.

Linkside also uses localStorage for preferences such as theme, display volume, chat-panel state and an optional licence entitlement. Those browser-side settings are not part of the screen-capture permission, and the share action does not read them before asking the browser to open its picker.

Safari blocks third-party cookies by default. Linkside supports desktop Safari for guests and offers limited hosting support when screen capture is available. Desktop Chrome and Edge are the recommended browsers for hosting.

A third-party cookie comes from a site other than the one in your address bar, often through content embedded in the page. Blocking that cookie limits the embedded site’s ability to reuse its cookie state across websites.

This can affect an embedded sign-in or another cross-site feature that expects the cookie to be available. Browsers provide a separate Storage Access API that embedded content can use to request access to otherwise blocked cookies, but the embedded service has to support it.

That restriction is about cross-site storage. It does not approve or reject Linkside’s separate request to capture your screen.

Linkside avoids that dependency in its room flow: the host and guest each open a Linkside page directly, and neither person signs in through another site.

Why screen sharing is a separate permission

When you select Start sharing, Linkside calls the browser’s screen-capture function, getDisplayMedia(). The call must come from a secure page after an action such as your click, and it requires your permission. Cookie access is not one of its requirements.

The browser then shows its own picker. Linkside does not pass hints that narrow the picker and cannot silently select a surface for you. Screen-capture permission cannot be saved for later, so the browser must ask each time Linkside makes a new capture request.

For more control over that choice, read what the screen-sharing permission grants or how to share one browser tab.

The result is simple: third-party-cookie blocking can stay on, while every screen share remains a fresh choice in the browser picker.

How to share in Safari or another privacy-focused browser

  1. Open the Linkside create page directly in a desktop browser. Built-in browsers inside messaging and social apps are not supported.
  2. Create the room and send the invite link to your guest.
  3. Select Start sharing to open the browser’s screen picker.
  4. Choose from the tabs, windows, or screens the browser offers, then confirm.
  5. Select Stop sharing in Linkside when you are done.

Only the host needs screen-capture permission. A guest can join from a supported mobile browser and view the host’s share, but hosting requires a desktop browser. The no-install walkthrough covers the full host-and-guest flow.

If sharing still does not work

Do not start by allowing third-party cookies. Match what you see to the stage that failed.

The room page will not load or create a room

Open Linkside in a regular desktop browser, not the built-in browser inside another app. If the page loads but room creation fails, follow the error shown or retry in desktop Chrome or Edge. Linkside does not ask for cross-site cookies when it creates a room, so allowing them does not address this failure.

The screen picker never appears

Make sure you are using a desktop browser and select Start sharing yourself. The browser requires that direct action before it can show the picker. If Linkside says hosting is unavailable or limited, use desktop Chrome or Edge. Changing cookie settings cannot add screen-capture support to a browser that lacks it.

The picker opens, but sharing does not connect

If the picker opened, the screen-capture request worked. Linkside then tries to connect the browsers directly using WebRTC. On a restrictive network where the direct path fails, Linkside can fall back to an encrypted TURN relay. A free room includes a five-minute relay trial; a valid licence removes that relay time limit.

You can join but cannot host

That is expected on mobile. Desktop Firefox and Safari hosting is also marked as limited even when screen capture is available. Use desktop Chrome or Edge to host. Supported mobile, Firefox and Safari browsers can still join as guests.

What Linkside can and cannot see

The live Linkside site loads a Cloudflare Web Analytics beacon for page-view and performance measurements. This is separate from the room lifecycle analytics below and does not create a session recording. Linkside does not require your real name, email address or another account identifier, and it does not record sessions.

Some operational information is still necessary. Linkside’s signaling service can observe that a room exists, roughly when guests join and how long the session lasts. If a TURN relay is needed, it sees the routing of encrypted packets, while Cloudflare’s edge sees IP-level traffic to the relay endpoints. Neither can read the screen or audio inside those packets, and Linkside does not pair these observations with an account identity.

Media is peer-to-peer first: Linkside tries a direct browser-to-browser connection by default, with the encrypted relay only as a fallback. Rooms disappear after the live session lifecycle ends.

Keep third-party-cookie blocking enabled. If you are ready to try the flow, create a room and let the browser picker show you exactly what Linkside is asking to share.