How to Block Sharing in Zoom Breakout Rooms

By: Your Friendly YTCTE IT Support Team
Blocking students from sharing their screen is an important security feature that Zoom has implemented. That being said, while possible, they don’t make it easy to do that in breakout rooms.

 

Before you get knee-deep, keep in mind the following three points when dealing with blocking sharing in breakout rooms:

 

  • This sharing block needs to be applied to every meeting individually. There is no master setting to block sharing in breakout rooms.
  • Not only that, but the block needs to be applied to each individual breakout room one at a time once you start breakout rooms. This will potentially give some time for kids to share their screen before you block it.
  • There is what I believe is a bug in Zoom that makes it even harder to stop sharing without a workaround.
To block sharing , follow these instructions:
  1. Launch Breakout rooms
  2. Go into the first breakout room
  3. Select the small arrow to the right of Share Screen (If you don’t see this, look at the paragraph below)
  4. Select Advanced Sharing options
  5. In the “Who can share?” section, select “Only Host”
  6. Go into each of the other breakout rooms and repeat steps 3-5

 

AHHH! I don’t have the little arrow next to the share button!
Don’t fret! I had this too. Sometimes. It’s seemingly sporadic; I’m assuming it’s a bug, The good news is that there is a workaround. Full disclosure: This is annoying and you will probably need to do it in every breakout room!

 

  1. Click the Share button
  2. Share your screen, or the whiteboard, or share something on your screen.
  3. Stop sharing
  4. The arrow should now appear!
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