{"id":48152983,"title":"Show HN: Raybeam – A better way to screen share on macOS","points":3,"user":"fisc","time":1778874485,"time_ago":"10 hours ago","type":"link","content":"

Problem

A few years ago I got my first ultra-wide monitor. It was a 49" Samsung monitor. I work as a software engineer, and in my line of work I need to screen share a lot. This almost immediately became a problem due to the size of the monitor. I would either need to get a second display just for screen sharing, share one window at a time (which required me to constantly stop/start sharing to select the new window), or share my entire screen making it difficult for other participants in the call to see what I'm doing due to the size of my display.

I wanted a solution to this. At the time, I was on Windows. So, I wrote a very basic application and released it for free on GitHub. This was called "FrameCast". It had a lot of issues, including usability issues. But at the time, it got the job done. After a while I moved away from the ultra wide monitor, so I stopped using the application.

Fast forward to 2026 when I again purchased a new Ultra Wide monitor. This time, using macOS. I ran into the same problem again, and when I loaded up my old FrameCast application, it no longer functioned properly on macOS.

This led me to creating Raybeam.

What is Raybeam

Raybeam is a native macOS menu bar application that aims to make screen sharing more accessible for users.

It features:

    A draggable, resizable region of your screen that can be shared in video conferencing applications.\n\n    The ability to filter out specific applications from being included in the shared region (this is useful for keeping things like Messages or Discord out of the shared feed, even when they are visible on your screen)\n\n        I believe this is one of the key features that sets this application apart from other similar applications.\n\n    The ability to notate the shared region with hand drawn notation.\n\n    Customizable hot-keys for quickly changing what region of the screen is being shared, toggling the live feed and quickly toggling "draw" mode.\n

\nCompare

I'm only aware of one similar application to this, which is AnyFrame. Having purchased and tested AnyFrame, it seems to be very laggy when dragging the overlay around, doesn't offer anything similar to Raybeams "hidden apps" feature, and has a much higher barrier to entry with a $70 lifetime license. None of these are issues with Raybeam.

Pricing

I've tried to remain fair with the pricing on this application. I see far too many applications being released with subscription based pricing models that I don't personally believe are reasonable considering the application that's being offered. I didn't want to do that with Raybeam.

This application is priced at $9.99 for a lifetime license on the Apple App Store.","url":"https://raybeam.live/","domain":"raybeam.live","comments":[],"comments_count":0}