Discord's screen sharing comes to mobile devices

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Discord added video chat functionality and screen sharing to its platform in 2017, enabling up to ten users at a time to hang out digitally and share their online activities. That user limit was raised to 50 earlier in March 2020 to help people to cope with the stresses of the COVID-19 outbreak, and today Discord announced that after several weeks of public testing, it's being extended to mobile devices as well.

The new mobile sharing functionality works in DM and voice channels, and is optimized for high framerates and low latency on mobile devices. The screen share feature supports audio and voice chat simultaneously—you can converse while shared audio is playing—and while streams still have a maximum of 50 concurrent viewers, voice channels will support unlimited screen shares.

It's not a revolutionary new feature for the platform, but enabling Discord users to take advantage of the screen share functionality without being parked behind a PC does promise to simplify large-scale virtual gatherings over the holidays—a timely boon in the midst of a global pandemic that will (hopefully) severely curtail in-person gatherings.

Mobile screen sharing will be rolled out for Android users and iOS 6-11, 13, and 14 today (and is expected to be completed by tomorrow, December 17, so you may not be able to use it just yet) and will come to iOS 12 devices sometime in the first half of January. Streaming support for tablets is "in the works [and] coming soon" as well.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.