Looking to stream games and more on Discord, but running into problems? We’ll help you troubleshoot the most common issues.
Discord’s Screen Share feature can be a great way to hang out with friends. While the feature is meant to stream games to a voice chat, you can also use it to stream movies, shows, and nearly anything on your computer. However, as with any streaming service, things can go wrong, usually with the video or audio. We’re here to help you fix that!
Why Is Discord Capturing the Wrong Screen?
If you have multiple applications or monitors, Discord can often capture the wrong screen, especially if you’re trying to stream something the chat service doesn’t recognize as a game. Thankfully, it is an easy fix to direct Discord to the right place.
First, you’ll want to share your screen on Discord. You can check out our in-depth guide for more information on sharing your screen, but we’ll also go over it quickly below.
To begin screen sharing, enter a voice chat and choose the ‘Share Your Screen’ option. This option is at the bottom of the voice channel, as well as above your username and settings on the sidebar.
When you click the button, you’ll get a pop-up prompt with three main options—Applications, Screens, and Capture Devices—with a number of choices within each section.
Click an option, and you’ll be taken to the next screen, which gives you some streaming options. The main one is to check the ‘also share application audio’ box, though you might also want to look at streaming quality settings.
When you’re done tweaking your settings, hit ‘Go Live’, and your stream will be running, hopefully without any issues.
If you’re playing a game that Discord recognizes, select the ‘Stream Game Title’ option on the sidebar, and you will automatically go to the second screen of the Screen Sharing settings. Discord will also not ask about audio, as it automatically picks up the game’s audio.
Generally, if Discord is capturing the wrong screen (and you didn’t accidentally select the wrong capture), it’s either because the application you wanted to stream did not show up on Discord’s list or because you cannot get Discord to recognize it. It’s best to restart the application and Discord to see if you can get it to register the application you’re trying to stream.
However, if you cannot get Discord to recognize it, you can share your entire screen instead. Discord warns that audio may not be available, though you can usually get audio to stream by changing some audio settings (which we’ll go into more below).
Why Is My Stream Capture Black?
So you got Netflix pulled up, you stream to Discord, and your friend says over voice, “I can’t see anything!”, even though everything looks fine on your end. This is an issue that can most commonly happen if you’re streaming a show from a streaming service, such as Netflix or Hulu, and there are a few causes and solutions to this.
The first possible issue, and the one that’s most likely, is that you have hardware acceleration turned on in Discord. This setting can often cause issues if you try to stream your screen—and the black screen will happen if your CPU can’t handle displaying the picture.
To solve this, go to your Discord settings, then go to the ‘Voice & Video’ settings:
From there, scroll down until you see the Hardware Acceleration setting, and turn it off.
You may need to restart the stream and Discord, but the streamed screen should show properly from then on.
Why Can’t Anyone Hear My Stream?
The last common issue you’ll run into with streaming will be with your audio, and unfortunately, it can be the most difficult to diagnose and fix. There are a few ways to try and fix the issue.
First, let’s start with the easiest possible fix—repeating the Screen Share instructions. There’s a chance that the ‘also share application audio’ box is unchecked, and if it’s not, you can just check the box and the audio should work.
However, the more likely issue is that Discord’s input and output settings are incorrect. Even if you fixed them before, Discord has a habit of resetting the audio settings or swapping to another audio device without warning. For that, you’ll need to return to Discord’s ‘Voice & Video’ settings.
At the top of these settings, you’ll see your audio input and output settings.
By default, Discord will have both of these settings as ‘Default’, which translates to whatever you have set as the main input and output audio devices in Windows. However, this doesn’t always work as intended. I normally put these Discord settings as my main input and output manually, which you can see in the screenshot above. It makes it less likely for the audio settings to fail due to something changing in Windows audio settings, as well as makes it easier to see when Discord changed your settings.
If you manually change the input and output settings and your viewers still can’t hear the audio, it may come down to the volume on the output devices. Check the volume of the device in Discord, in the Windows audio settings, and even in the application’s or game’s audio players—while it stands to reason that if the output were muted anywhere, you wouldn’t be able to hear it either, the volume might just be set too low for the viewer to hear it, while still being loud enough for you to hear.
If the audio still isn’t coming through, you’ll want to check the devices themselves in the Windows audio settings. Sometimes, devices can take over as the ‘main’ output or input even if you don’t set it. For example, my monitors have speakers in them, and for whatever reason Windows will try and default to them, even if I swap my default to another output.
On Windows 11, you can open your settings, select ‘System’ on the sidebar, and then ‘Sound’.
From there, scroll down until you see ‘More sound settings’, and click on it.
This will open a new pop-up window with all the devices Windows recognizes for playback and recording. Choose any playback device you don’t use, right-click it, and choose ‘Disable’.
When you’re done, you can reset Windows’s default devices to the ones you actually use, and then return to Discord and fix its audio settings. Reboot Discord (and maybe your computer for good measure), start the stream up again, and your audio issues should be solved!
