DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing • Hacker News Board

DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#1

Post by geerlingguy » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing
github.com

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#2

Post by mcphage » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

As someone with an ultrawide monitor, this seems like a really neat solution. Thanks for sharing it!

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#3

Post by rcarmo » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:41 PM UTC

This is _genius_. I have been using RegionToShare in Windows to share only a section of a widescreen monitor, but didn't have a good Mac equivalent. Now I have something that may well work _just as well_ with Windows inside Parallels (need to try that ASAP, am on the "wrong" Mac now).

Edit: A quick test shows that yes, the Windows VM sees the additional display just fine--but, alas, Parallels doesn't let me pass _just_ one physical and that virtual display to the VM, so I can't have my "personal" portrait monitor unoccupied by Windows...

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#4

Post by delusional » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:42 PM UTC

What an intriguing idea. I wonder if I could do something similar on linux by placing a second monitor on top of my current one with xrandr.

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#5

Post by _6GoofyWizard9_ » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

Very nice idea! It would be nice to be able to do the same on Linux and/or Windows, too!

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#6

Post by neilv » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:49 PM UTC

The title could clarify it's for MacOS X.

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#7

Post by sadjad » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

delusional wrote: post #4

What an intriguing idea. I wonder if I could do something similar on linux by placing a second monitor on top of my current one with xrandr.

On Linux, you can try Xephyr (https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Xephyr/, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xephyr). It's not as nice as DeskPad, but you can basically achieve the same thing.

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#8

Post by ekinertac » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:53 PM UTC

what a briliant idea, most of my meeting i had to share my 4K screen with laptop pals and most of the time i had to zoom so they can see. now it's solved.

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#9

Post by transfire » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:54 PM UTC

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could adjust resolution per window?

On a 4k monitor some applications have tiny text and icons, and no way adjust that I can find.

Re: DeskPad – A virtual monitor for screen sharing

#10

Post by mmastrac » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

Very cool. Does it require the "screen recording" indication to be up the entire time whether screen recording is happening or not? I don't see any info in the repo but I recall some previous solutions would effectively appear to be recording all the time.

EDIT: unfortunately it does. But if it's designed for screen sharing, it's probably not a big deal. Unfortunately there's no easy way to mirror on OSX without this, AFAIK. This particular issue is annoying for certain USB-C video adapters that create a virtual screen and mirror it over an arbitrary protocol.