Hide tab names when screen sharing

Before you share your screen, you probably check the page you’re about to show. Hardly anyone checks the row of tabs above it.

Those tabs are a short summary of everything else you have open. Each one shows the page’s title and the site’s icon, and on a call, everyone can read them for as long as your screen is shared.

What a tab title gives away

Websites write their titles to be useful to you, which is exactly why they’re revealing to anyone else. A few common examples:

Your email tab often shows your unread count, and in some apps the address of the account you’re signed in to. A document tab shows the document’s name, so a file called “Q4 layoffs – draft” or “Offer letter – Sam Ortiz” announces itself in the tab bar. Project tools put the board or ticket name in the title, which means the name of another client, as covered in hide client names when screen sharing. Chat apps show the channel you were last in. Search pages show what you searched for.

The icons say plenty on their own. A row of tabs with your bank, a job board, a health portal and a dating site doesn’t need titles to tell a story. If you’re presenting to your manager with a job site open three tabs over, the icon is enough.

None of this is visible for long, and most people on the call won’t be looking for it. But calls are often recorded, and a recording can be paused on any frame. A tab title that was on screen while you set up the share can be read in full afterwards.

Why it slips past

The page gets your attention because it’s the thing you’re presenting. The tab bar is part of the browser, and most of us stopped seeing it years ago. Titles also change by themselves: a new email changes the count, and a chat notification can add a channel name to a tab you weren’t using.

The usual advice is to share a single tab instead of the whole screen, and it’s good advice when you can follow it. Sharing one tab sends only that page, with no tab bar and no address bar. But a lot of calls need more than one tab: a demo that moves between apps, a walkthrough that switches to a spreadsheet, a presentation with notes in another window. Once you share a window or the whole screen, the tab bar comes with it. Closing every other tab before each call works, but it means losing your place in everything you were doing.

How Smart Blur hides tab names

Smart Blur is a browser extension that hides sensitive information on your screen, on your own computer, before anyone on the call sees it. Hiding tab names is part of the free version.

Open the Smart Blur panel and find Tab names. It has three settings:

• Off leaves titles and icons alone.
• This tab hides the title and icon of the tab you’re on.
• All tabs hides them in every tab.

A hidden tab shows a row of dots instead of its title, and a plain grey square instead of the site’s icon. The page itself doesn’t change, so you can keep working in it. If a site changes its title while it’s hidden, for example when a new message arrives, Smart Blur hides it again. When All tabs is on and you want one tab to keep its name, such as the one you’re presenting, choose Show this tab under the setting.

Because a browser window is usually named after its open tab, hiding titles also keeps them out of the window list that Zoom, Teams or Meet show when you choose what to share.

If you use Share Shield in Smart Blur Pro, you can also turn on Hide tab names while sharing in its settings. Tab names are then hidden in every tab as soon as you start sharing from the browser, and come back when you stop.

What it can’t hide

Smart Blur changes what each page reports as its title and icon. It can’t change the rest of the browser’s own interface, so a few things stay as they are:

• The address bar. A web address can be as revealing as a title, especially for documents and searches. Sharing a single tab hides it; sharing a window or the whole screen doesn’t.
• Browser pages. Settings, the new tab page, the extensions store and similar built-in pages don’t let extensions change them.
• History and suggestions. Titles in your history, bookmarks and address bar suggestions are unchanged, so avoid opening those menus while you share.
• Other apps. Smart Blur works inside Chrome and Edge. Window titles in your other apps aren’t affected.

Tab names are one part of what a shared screen gives away. The pages themselves carry names, emails, account numbers and client details. Smart Blur blurs those on the page as well, and you can give it a list of words, such as client names, to hide wherever they appear.

Before your next call, set Tab names to All tabs and look along your tab bar. If all you can see is dots and grey squares, there’s nothing left there for anyone to read.