15 ms·

Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

404 points by coscreen 7y ago

coscreen 7y ago
OP here, we believe that the time has come to let remote workers and highly agile teams get stuff done together in a very different and much more natural way. CoScreen is a remote collaboration tool that enables exactly that. Problem: Pretty much anyone who has ever worked remotely knows it - today’s remote collaboration solutions provide much better screensharing quality and reliability (thanks, Zoom) compared to a few years ago. But it takes the same frustrating steps to connect and to pick windows again and again, only one user can share screens and remote control at a time, users have to ask for permissions to interact, etc. Solution: By turning your secondary display into your team desktop, CoScreen enables you to share your windows with your peers in a single, natural interaction step by drag & drop. Any windows you drag to your extended screen are shared with your peers. They can share their windows in the same way, on the same desktop, side-by-side, at the same time. Each team member has an own mouse pointer and can interact with all windows without having to request controls. It also works great if you only have one screen and you can also chat with each other via audio. CoScreen launched on Product Upcoming with a private beta a few months ago with over 300 sign-ups and early testers from small startups to large tech companies. Since today it is in public beta and you can use it for free by going to coscreen.co. We can’t wait to hear what you think as it’s still an early beta version and while it’s still rough around the edges. Till & the CoScreen team
- trpc 7y ago
  How much does it take to pay a hunter on PH in order to be featured these days? asking for a friend.
  - orliesaurus 7y ago
    I think the go to rate was $5k, this is maybe 6 months ago. It was a friend who told me after they asked a famous ex-Uber employee to hunt them
    - trpc 7y ago
      That's why I have never found a single useful product on ProductHunt for years now. It has become an absolute farce that it should be illegal.
      - halfjoking 7y ago
        I was just thinking how much PH has turned to shit lately when I saw this in #2 spot today: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/linkbuildr-for-wordpress https://www.producthunt.com/posts/linkbuildr-for-wordpress Really? A Wordpress "Linkbuildr" that automates spamming emails when you write posts? And nothing but praise in the comments? PH has become a joke and we definitely need some ethical competition in the product discovery space.
        datashaman 7y ago
        I used AlternativeTo to find alternatives to product hunt, and it came up as the top suggestion: https://alternativeto.net/software/alternativeto/ https://alternativeto.net/software/alternativeto/ https://alternativeto.net/software/product-hunt/ https://alternativeto.net/software/product-hunt/
        egfx 7y ago
        Couldn’t agree more. Yesterday I was browsing the top product of the day to see what future competition was like and the product was a color swatch that gave you similar colors for inspiration. It looked like they mashed together a codepen with a color swatch api I’ve starred but I won’t even bother linking to here. It’s sad for sure.
        omarchowdhury 7y ago
        Could it be that there aren't that many exciting new products coming out? Or is that blasphemy?
        TomMarius 7y ago
  - ksahin 7y ago
    What do you mean? You can hunt your own product on PH now!
- tmikaeld 7y ago
  How are you different from Vectera.com which does the same thing, but with persistent rooms too?
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Thanks for your question! Afaik Vectera runs in your browser and focuses on sharing what's in it. CoScreen lives on OS-level so you can share and interact with any native window, browser or not. They also don't seem to support multiple users sharing windows at the same time side-by-side but please let us know if we're missing anything.
- skue 7y ago
  Congrats on the launch. This looks like one of those great ideas that works so much better than the old way that it feels obvious in hindsight. I’m curious how you handle different monitor resolutions?
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Thanks a lot for the kind words! Great question, CoScreen shows shared windows based on their relative positions and sizes. So they appear in the same way for all participants. If there are huge difference between resolutions, the users will see either very small/large fonts but we still concluded after many prototypes that this is the best tradeoff. Feedback welcome nevertheless...
    - lima 7y ago
      So what you're saying is, you don't handle different monitor resolutions. My team is split between people with 4k or even 5k screens and wide-angle screens with lower pixel densities, so this would be an issue. Not sure how common that is, though.
      - coscreen 7y ago
        Sorry for the misunderstanding - We do handle the translation of resolutions to create the same layout for everyone. In addition, you can actually pinch zoom into remote windows if necessary.
        lima 7y ago
        Got it. Awesome!
- fimdomeio 7y ago
  Seems like a great idea. One question is visual data only shared among peers or does it pass through your servers?
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Thanks! It goes through a central server so it can make it through corporate firewalls. This adds latency unfortunately but makes it more reliable for folks behind strange proxies and scales better for >2 users. But in any case, we'll enable P2P connections shortly so it won't go through the server if it doesn't have to, stay tuned. Sign up on our website and we'll let you know once it's out.
    - JoshTriplett 7y ago
      If you haven't already, you might consider adding end-to-end encryption, which will make people more comfortable with it going through your servers in the cases where it still needs to. Also, I'd assume you use video compression; keep in mind that encrypted video still reveals some information through sizes, especially if you have some idea of the kinds of applications users typically use.
      - coscreen 7y ago
        Absolutely, it's already end to end encrypted but good point on metadata...
- stanislavb 7y ago
  Hey mate, congrats on the launch! You should verify CoScreen on SaaSHub https://www.saashub.com/coscreen https://www.saashub.com/coscreen
- thawkins 7y ago
  I gave up in fustration, the site has no real information, no system requirements, no installation information. does it run on linux? I like the idea but i have a department with 100 fedora workstations in it.
  - mean_gene_1976 7y ago
    I am feeling the same way mate. I believe it’s only for macOS.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Thanks for your feedback, sorry if that wasn't clear. We'll fix our website. It's indeed macOS-only for now (we had to start somewhere). Here all steps to get started: https://support.coscreen.co/portal/kb/articles/getting-started-with-coscreen https://support.coscreen.co/portal/kb/articles/getting-start...
      - mean_gene_1976 7y ago
        Naw mate. Your good. I read the site in English and it said clearly macOS. No need to apologize. I was just trying to be nice. Site was cool. Maybe more documentation. Good luck to you.
        coscreen 7y ago
        Thanks a lot!
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Thanks as well, it's macOS-only for but we're working on other OSes. It should work on anything that runs macOS Mojave and higher and at least on 5-6 year old Mac Books.
    - greggman2 7y ago
      I'm curious how many Mac users have multiple monitors? I don't think I've ever seen a single one (I'm sure they exist). I see iMac users on one big monitor. I see MacBook/Air/Pro users either on their laptop or one monitor, usually with their laptop closed. Where as pretty much all Windows users in game dev seem to have 2 or more monitors. Are you expecting lots of mac users to buy a second monitor or use an iPad for this second monitor or is my experience just atypical and lots of mac users have 2 monitors?
- coscreen 7y ago
  UPDATE 1: Thanks so, so much for the huge interest & valuable feedback, please keep it coming! Here's a quick form for the many folks interested in Windows & Linux support, please help us prioritize: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3 UPDATE 2: As mentioned further below, we're also on Product Hunt today - check it out (and let's beat the boring marketing apps): https://www.producthunt.com/posts/coscreen https://www.producthunt.com/posts/coscreen
  - coscreen 7y ago
    UPDATE 3: The OS survey link doesn't seem to work on some platforms, please use use the full link: https://teamcoscreen.typeform.com/to/IOJ8ql https://teamcoscreen.typeform.com/to/IOJ8ql
- texasbigdata 7y ago
  Not even remote. As a nontech worker its unbelievably helpful in a shared office too. I used to have a big screen tv and 2 keyboards and wireless mice at a coffee table in my office for just this problem, and a crazy (for normal humans) hdmi splitting setup that allowed for a byod of sorts. Great idea!
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Agreed!
- fragmede 7y ago
  MPX, multi-pointers on X11/Linux systems was amazing, back when it first came out around 2005, and definitely seemed like the future of collaboration. I'm glad that someone's making a go at productizing the concept and building a company around using it for collaboration. it gets me sad to see cool tech languish add research projects because of barriers, whatever they may be, to have a sellable product. Some make it though; Ksplice is one such product that had a successful company and exit that I can think of.
- em-bee 7y ago
  i'd like to use this in a classroom setting where either every participant, or the moderator/teacher can see all shared windows but decide to feature only one or two of them. one way to do that would be the ability to minimize shared windows. the teacher (or anyone with moderator privileges) would be allowed to minimize windows, but also have a way to look at windows while minimized (as a teacher i want to see what everyone is doing on their own windows, while at the same time get the students to focus on a particular window.)
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Great idea, we're already looking into educational use cases. Feel free to reach out directly if you want to discuss this further.
apetresc 7y ago
This looks like an amazing idea executed brilliantly–reminds me of Dropbox in that way. But I've been thinking about it for the last five minutes and I cannot figure out how you guys actually managed to implement this. What sorcery is at the root of this? How do you composite windows from two different machines into a single desktop on macOS?
- nicoburns 7y ago
  I assume it's not a real desktop, but a full-screen window of their app. And I guess it basically works via two-way machine control. Each person's computer is actually driving their own windows, but the software allows everyone to control everyone's (shared) windows, just like one-sided remote-control apps. It's a pretty clever idea!
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Thanks both - here's how it works: 1. CoScreen captures each of your window to be shared individually. 2. It sends them across in a combined video feed per user with window positions & sizes. 3. On the receiving end, it creates actual native windows which are filled with the video streams of the corresponding windows. That way they look and feel like actual local windows. E.g. you can move & resize them like any other native windows. 4. Whenever you click or type into a remote window, the input is send across to the origin of the window and applied there.
    - JoeSmithson 7y ago
      This is so good! How does it work with selecting text and copy-pasting? In the Sublime Text example, can Bob overwrite Alice's clipboard.
      - coscreen 7y ago
        We're still figuring this out and will probably get inspired from remote desktop solutions. But reach out to us if you have specific ideas
jawnknee 7y ago
I want to see the actual product. Cool animations but a picture is worth 1000 words
- qwnp 7y ago
  The intro video on the homepage shows the actual software in action at around 53 seconds (mouse over the video to unveil the seek bar).
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Exactly, here's the direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHI5-ne2F2I&feature=youtu.be&t=53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHI5-ne2F2I&feature=youtu.be...
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      I thought this was vapourware. The best video you can show for this is your JIRA board where everyone can update it in realtime in a team meeting with remote teams. Don't bother with the animations, they make your product look not real! Very impressive.
      - coscreen 7y ago
        Thanks for your feedback. We felt that it's hard to get the concept across without showing both clients. But thanks again for the input, we'll show the real interactions more prominently.
        andy_ppp 7y ago
        If you just show people using it for real work you will be okay
        coscreen 7y ago
        True, will do!
igetspam 7y ago
MacOS only. Leaves me (Linux) half our devs (Windows), all of our execs (Windows) out.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Yes unfortunately and yet only for now. We just started with Mac (coin toss) and now we'll do our best to cover all of them soon.
  - mbreese 7y ago
    That's sad -- from your demo video, I thought you were supporting Windows too (the minesweeper window). You might want to make that more explicit.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Point taken, we only have a raw windows prototype so far.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Hey both, we were overwhelmed by the interest (and therefore also wrt. requests for Windows & Linux support) but we've just set up this form to help us prioritize the next platform CoScreen should run on: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3
stuqqq 7y ago
I am worried about screen sharing. Who knows what I could browse at work. I don’t want to mistakenly share my credit card number.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Even with CoScreen you only share screens/windows when you want to. You can go online/offline with a tap of a button and in any case it only shares windows on a display you choose.
- downerending 7y ago
  This is a very serious security concern, in my mind. I regularly type into the "wrong" window, due to (pick one) poorly designed UI or my stupidity. This is mostly harmless in my solo environment, although one does have to be careful about things like .bash_history and websites that might actually be listening for keystrokes and sending them upstream. Having a team window seems like it would make this a greater risk. On a different topic, I'm one of those people that can't stand pair programming and related--it destroys my ability to concentrate deeply on the problem in front of me.
googleisevil6 7y ago
I'm curious why somebody would start with a machinetosh? Windows is used way more than machinetosh on developer machines. Is it because: 1) Authors don't know the demographics? or 2) They think that Windows users wouldn't pay? (Not true I think) or some other reason?
- billconan 7y ago
  it might be a technical reason sometimes. Does windows provide an API for you to capture a window, instead of a desktop on a specific screen?
  - coscreen 7y ago
    True, just in this case we just went with Mac because we used it personally. Windows might actually have been easier because macOS gets increasingly restrictive (e.g. with Catalina). Nevertheless, glad we made it and we'll do our best to support all major OSes.
  - googleisevil6 7y ago
    I don't want to make this a game of one upmanship but I'd be surprised if there are GUI things you could do on a machinetosh that you cannot do on Windows.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Agreed, hopefully Windows will be easier though. Getting mac done well gets harder with every macOS update...
      - LeonB 7y ago
        Windows APIs give great info about size and position of windows. Challenging part is really the per monitor scaling, but it’s not impossible either. Great product, top work
        7y ago
purple-again 7y ago
From a security standpoint can you discuss the life of my data as it goes from my computer, through your service, and into my coworkers computer. What is stored where? Who at your company can access what? Thank you in advance for any information you are able to provide.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Hi there, we're capturing windows at the client, send them across through our video bridge (to get through proxies & firewalls and scale beyond 2+ users per channel) and then the windows are shown on the remote end. We don't store any shared windows, videos, images, or audio data. We only capture anonymized usage stats to get an idea what we need to optimize for (e.g. # of sessions and users per session). Our security concept was recently approved after an extensive vendor risk assessment by a large global enterprise. This is a positive indication but obviously don't hesitate to drop us a mail if you want to discuss specific requirements!
t0mbstone 7y ago
If there's one thing I can't stand in a screen sharing app (I'm looking at you, Slack and Zoom), it's annoying overlays. I want to be able to open up my IDE, go full screen with it, and have zero overlays visible. The only tool I've been able to find that lets me do this is Tuple (tuple.app), which is the closest thing I've found to Screenhero (which was my favorite screen sharing and pair programming app back in the day).
- coscreen 7y ago
  Agreed! Soon CoScreen's UI controls will get hidden automatically so you won't see anything but shared windows.
  - t0mbstone 7y ago
    That's awesome, and I'm glad to hear it! If I could make a tiny suggestion: Why not hide the coscreen functionality under a little system tray icon with a pop-out menu? That way, it's invisible, but still easy to get to.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Good point, we had thought about it but wondered if users would find it. But we'll look into it based on your feedback...
- SkyPuncher 7y ago
  Zoom's overlay controls are pretty great too
jedberg 7y ago
What if I only have one screen?
- Biganon 7y ago
  "It also works great if you only have one screen"
  - jedberg 7y ago
    Where do you see that? I can't find that on the page. Also, how?
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Great question - here's how it works: If you only have one display (e.g. while you're on the run) it can still share the windows on this desktop but you can share/unshare all of them with a single click on the display icon next to your user. You can also auto-minimize all your windows when joining a room.
      - jedberg 7y ago
        Ok so it's an all or nothing type thing? I'm either sharing my whole screen or none of it? Still definitely useful! Just trying to learn the limitations. This is awesome by the way, I'll definitely be checking it out!
        coscreen 7y ago
        Exactly - all your windows on your screen to be specific, so e.g. not your desktop background or files on your desktop. We're considering adding the ability to pick individual windows but feedback welcome...
        gotrythis 7y ago
        On the Mac, could you assign a "spaces" virtual desktop to be shared with coscreen? Then you can just 3 finger swipe between a private screen and the shared one.
zlsa 7y ago
This is a great idea, and your implementation of it looks awesome! I don't have a use for it at the moment, but I'm bookmarking it for later. A bit of feedback on your website: the yellow you've chosen is nearly impossible to read on my monitor, especially with the thin font used in "Sign up".
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks for your feedback, we'll fix that asap...
zimbatm 7y ago
This looks like a cool product if both people have a secondary screen. A similar but much more low-key solution that I love using is tmate[1]. Tmate is a tmux session that can be shared over SSH. It's super easy to install and anyone who has a SSH client can join in two seconds. It's great for pairing sessions if both developers are into vim or emacs editors. Or just to show a quick thing. [1]: https://tmate.io/ https://tmate.io/
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing! It's true that CoScreen works best with multiple screens but it also works with just one screen (details in a comment on this thread). Tmate is indeed awesome as long as you're working within Terminal.
jaequery 7y ago
Does this require installing a software on your computer? Or is this purely browser based? Or is it Java?
- coscreen 7y ago
  It's a native macOS app you need to install, other operating systems and a web client will follow!
  - Etheryte 7y ago
    This would be very nice to have up and front on the landing page. I bent over backwards looking for OS compatibility.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Got it, we'll fix it today.
rihegher 7y ago
There are two job positions to join their team as well. I guess they could even use their own tool during a test interview.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Spot on ;)
BillSaysThis 7y ago
Pricing info would be great, free during beta is nice but for my company at least we would need to know the cost upfront.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Fully understood, we haven't finalized it and it will likely be free for at least 3 months but then it will likely be in line with Slack, Zoom, etc.
kisna72 7y ago
Looks like a pretty neat product. Congrats on the launch
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks a lot!
danenania 7y ago
Looks very cool! On security, when you say encrypted in realtime, does this mean client-side encryption? Is the server trusted?
- coscreen 7y ago
  We're building on Jitsi's videobridge, check out the details here: https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/ https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/
ticktockten 7y ago
Look forward to using this in linux! Definitely a tool I would use.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Glad to hear, stay tuned
- coscreen 7y ago
  Here's a quick form where you can capture your interest and stay in the loop: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3
mncharity 7y ago
Some cities have meetups doing coding katas using pair/mob programming. Eg [1]. Perhaps a demo opportunity? Though the mac-only could be an issue. Fwiw, doing a 3D "desktop" on linux a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised by electron's desktopCapturer for visuals. But multi-source input... X was ok-ish, Wayland not. [1] https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Software-Crafters/ https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Software-Crafters/
- coscreen 7y ago
  Great idea! We'll follow-up. Also thanks for the hint, we'll use it as a starting point for Linux
OmarIsmail 7y ago
This is brilliant. Super easy mental model. Super easy to use (just drag and drop!). No friction. This is going to be big, whether it's you guys (hopefully!) or someone else that steals this idea (boo!) And I wouldn't pay too much attention to the Windows/Linux users in the very early days if it's too much of a development burden. There are tons of tech forward companies that are mac-only that are a large enough market to build momentum. If the windows/linux people want it make them put their money where their mouth is and charge them in some way. It costs nothing for them to say "Build this for me!" but they already have enough info from the demos and mac app to make a purchasing decision. So if they're serious get some money from them. If you do a pre-order and say "if it's not released in 3 months you get your money back" that should be enough signal to know if they really want it or not. Congrats! Not many people make something this good. Now don't screw it up :) And if you're not part of YC already you should do a late application for the W20 batch.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks so much, feedback like this makes this worth it! We'll do our best and thanks for the great advice!
- MrQuincle 7y ago
  I bet Linux is not even possible. How do you force windows to be at the same location across different systems. I use i3. There are plenty of other tiling managers. This is not gonna be cross-platform. Just my two cents.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Afaik each OS has hooks that lets apps with the required permissions set the location & measurements of other windows. So we're optimistic but obviously we're not done yet.
  - robgibbons 7y ago
    Shouldn't be too hard. The wmctrl package, for example, supports a whole bunch of different window managers.
lima 7y ago
Excellent idea, brilliantly executed. But as a CTO, I would be concerned about the security implications. It makes sense to route traffic via a central server because P2P does not scale to large numbers of participants (which is why things like the Jitsi Videobridge exist despite WebRTC P2P being a thing), but it means your customers have to trust you not to get hacked, be compelled to, or otherwise misplace/record sessions. Since peers can interact with the remote windows, this is basically a remote control tool, and getting hacked also means being able to inject keystrokes or otherwise compromise clients (as recently demonstrated by TeamViewer). For security-critical things like SRE work this is a particularly big concern. Adding end-to-end encryption would alleviate some of these concerns and reduce the attack surface to implementation mistakes or compromised software updates, which is far easier to reason about. Perhaps it's not a concern for a small startup, but it's definitely something larger companies worry about. Please add support for other platforms and add end-to-end encryption, because I really want to use this! As suggested by someone else, we would definitely pre-order licenses for Linux and Windows.
- gfodor 7y ago
  I am pretty sure that E2E encryption is impossible today if you are using a WebRTC SFU since there's no spec for it. The closest thing is PERC Lite [1] which no browsers support, though maybe you could cobble something together native. Is there some path I didn't know about? 1. https://www.meetecho.com/blog/meetecho-and-cosmo-strike-again-perc-lite-integration-in-janus/ https://www.meetecho.com/blog/meetecho-and-cosmo-strike-agai...
  - lima 7y ago
    I don't know about browsers, but I know that Signal implements E2E-encrypted phone calls using WebRTC for signalling.
    - wichert 7y ago
      WebRTC does not do signalling - that is the one part that you always have to provide yourself. WebRTC provides the peer descriptions and ICE candidates that you need to transport to the other party/parties.
moralestapia 7y ago
Very good idea I love it! I foresee and amazing future for you, just don't give up, keep it going for as long as you can. Cheers!
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks a lot for your support!
brightball 7y ago
Love it. Hope you eventually have an Ubuntu client.
- coscreen 7y ago
  We'll do our best, please keep bugging us on this ;)
miki123211 7y ago
How do you handle/plan to handle accessibility? If it grows, Sooner or later, a company which needs a11y for legal reasons might consider your product, so it's important.
- coscreen 7y ago
  We're actually using macOS accessibility APIs to manage local and remote windows and are therefore optimistic we can sort this out - eg by moving windows via keyboard. Detailed requirements are welcome!
bradknowles 7y ago
Is it possible to default to sharing in read-only mode? I've got plenty of stuff I'd be happy to share with other people to let them look, but I don't want them messing things up. I'd be fine allowing them write access on a per-user/per-window basis, but I'd like to default to read-only.
- coscreen 7y ago
  We decided for an "open-first" approach unlike most other apps but are considering adding a flag to configure this. Feedback welcome!
techntoke 7y ago
So basically this just turns a second display into a screen share where multiple users can share their app windows? Seems like this could have been tackled 95% with existing open source software and supported on multiple platforms.
- BjoernKW 7y ago
  Given that another commenter likened CoScreen to Dropbox in that it is an "amazing idea executed brilliantly" it seems only fair that they've already got their very own Dropbox comment now. 95% isn't 100%. A mere assemblage of tools isn't a finished, polished, well-designed, reliable product.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Thanks both, time will tell if we have the remaining 5%! Obviously we'd love this to be as legendary in 12 years from now ;)
jacobn 7y ago
This is huge. Love the concept. My company is 100% remote, and we're having all the pain points with Zoom that have already been mentioned. We also all have more than one monitor. But we're on windows. Get that pre-order form online already! ;)
- aagha 7y ago
  I literally started typing a note to my team to check this out and say: We're going to be trying this out after the holiday, and then realized it was wasn't Window's ready. Super bummed.
  - keithnz 7y ago
    yep, not obvious from the home screen it isn't for windows... the "Now available for MacOS" gave me the impression it was originally for windows... also no hint the company is even interested in windows...? UPDATE: yes, in their https://www.coscreen.co/feedback https://www.coscreen.co/feedback they ask about windows support...
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Sorry for letting you all wait for the Windows client. We'll work on it but we had to start somewhere and coin-flipped on Mac, kind off. As mentioned further below, CoScreen is built mostly on an platform-agnostic stack so we hope it won't be a gargantuan effort to support Windows. But stay tuned (and sign up if you want to stay in the loop).
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Sorry for that - we've just set up this form to gather interest & get feedback on which OS to prioritize next: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3 Please fill it out and you'll hear from us!
- walrus01 7y ago
  I honestly don't understand why more companies haven't dropped Zoom after their recent major lapses in security practices: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=zoom+mac+os+security https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=zoom+ma... It leaves me with very little confidence that the Zoom client for Windows doesn't have some gaping undiscovered vulnerability in it.
paogli 7y ago
Ok, so where is the actual product? There’s no way to try it as a demo and the demo shown in the video is a fake one - yes, even the one after the flat animations with the real desktop. My impression is that the product hasn’t been built yet or is even ready for beta. Is this another one of those ‘MVP’ landing pages that fools the consumer into believing there is a product to gather reception? Thanks.
- coscreen 7y ago
  It actually exists and you can use it today (note: mac only for now): https://www.coscreen.co/getstarted https://www.coscreen.co/getstarted => Gets you to the download page, download the DMG, launch the app, collaborate...
Urgo 7y ago
Not to beat a dead horse here but my first thought was this is awesome! I want to try this out with the team! Then noticed mac only. Nevermind... Repost to HN when its out for windows please!
- coscreen 7y ago
  We'll do, promised.
- coscreen 7y ago
  To follow-up: we'll definitely post on HN once we get there, in the meantime we'd love your feedback on OSes we should support - here's a quick poll: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3
est 7y ago
This is my child dream product ever since I learned about OLE and DCOM. A draggable & sharable window object, or remote objects embeddable in any window. It's a shame they didn't evolve down to that path. Good job OP!
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thank you, /almost/ there ;)
winrid 7y ago
Why not just share that secondary screen with Zoom? Am I missing some value add?
- coscreen 7y ago
  Because only one user can do that at a time (sharing as well as remote control afaik) and the others have to watch & listen. With CoScreen, multiple users can share & interact simultaneously or also switch much more quickly between content of each other and interact with it side by side (e.g. Alice's window right next to Bob's window).
vijaybritto 7y ago
I don't know why it was decided to post in HN before explaining everything clearly in the text, but its good to see that the OP has been explaining as much as possible to everyone. Most of it is repeat questions about monitors, network security and OS compatibility(welcome to real world use cases :)). Adding this in the page beforehand would have changed the mood and tone in this comment section today :D Good luck with the product! For the next update please explain things before hand in your page!
- coscreen 7y ago
  Will do, most details were actually covered on our support page (https://support.coscreen.co/ https://support.coscreen.co/) and we didn't want to overload the homepage with too many details but we're learning & iterating all the time so thanks for your feedback!
softwarelimits 7y ago
I wanted to know what this is but was not able to read the text because somebody had the idea that text on a website should be extremely thin and low contrast. The idea of making your text as hard as possible to read is a very bad one.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks for your feedback, this is fixed. Let us know if you face any further issues.
t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
>"... entirely free during the public beta..." What makes it different from (or better than) free versions of Zoom or Webex Teams?
- coscreen 7y ago
  The interactivity that multiple users can share & control at the same time and also that it takes just one step to connect. But obviously CoScreen is meant for everyone & every use case, it works best for teams that collaborate again and again with the same group of peers.
fuddle 7y ago
Sounds interesting. I would like to see a video of the product on the home page before using it.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks for your feedback. We'll needed to get the general concept across first as it's tough to explain our approach without showing both sides. Input & ideas welcome! But here's the part of the video that shows the app (note: Linux & Windows isn't released yet, but you can see exactly how it works for an individual user) https://youtu.be/gHI5-ne2F2I?t=53 https://youtu.be/gHI5-ne2F2I?t=53
vkdelta 7y ago
Can I replace teamviewer with this? Their pricing is too expensive.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Just give CoScreen a try and let us know what you think. Note that we'll probably also charge for CoScreen one day but we'll do our best to keep it affordable.

404 points by coscreen 7y ago

OP here, we believe that the time has come to let remote workers and highly agile teams get stuff done together in a very different and much more natural way. CoScreen is a remote collaboration tool that enables exactly that. Problem: Pretty much anyone who has ever worked remotely knows it - today’s remote collaboration solutions provide much better screensharing quality and reliability (thanks, Zoom) compared to a few years ago. But it takes the same frustrating steps to connect and to pick windows again and again, only one user can share screens and remote control at a time, users have to ask for permissions to interact, etc. Solution: By turning your secondary display into your team desktop, CoScreen enables you to share your windows with your peers in a single, natural interaction step by drag & drop. Any windows you drag to your extended screen are shared with your peers. They can share their windows in the same way, on the same desktop, side-by-side, at the same time. Each team member has an own mouse pointer and can interact with all windows without having to request controls. It also works great if you only have one screen and you can also chat with each other via audio. CoScreen launched on Product Upcoming with a private beta a few months ago with over 300 sign-ups and early testers from small startups to large tech companies. Since today it is in public beta and you can use it for free by going to coscreen.co. We can’t wait to hear what you think as it’s still an early beta version and while it’s still rough around the edges. Till & the CoScreen team

trpc 7y ago
How much does it take to pay a hunter on PH in order to be featured these days? asking for a friend.
- orliesaurus 7y ago
  I think the go to rate was $5k, this is maybe 6 months ago. It was a friend who told me after they asked a famous ex-Uber employee to hunt them
  - trpc 7y ago
    That's why I have never found a single useful product on ProductHunt for years now. It has become an absolute farce that it should be illegal.
    - halfjoking 7y ago
      I was just thinking how much PH has turned to shit lately when I saw this in #2 spot today: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/linkbuildr-for-wordpress https://www.producthunt.com/posts/linkbuildr-for-wordpress Really? A Wordpress "Linkbuildr" that automates spamming emails when you write posts? And nothing but praise in the comments? PH has become a joke and we definitely need some ethical competition in the product discovery space.
      - datashaman 7y ago
        I used AlternativeTo to find alternatives to product hunt, and it came up as the top suggestion: https://alternativeto.net/software/alternativeto/ https://alternativeto.net/software/alternativeto/ https://alternativeto.net/software/product-hunt/ https://alternativeto.net/software/product-hunt/
      - egfx 7y ago
        Couldn’t agree more. Yesterday I was browsing the top product of the day to see what future competition was like and the product was a color swatch that gave you similar colors for inspiration. It looked like they mashed together a codepen with a color swatch api I’ve starred but I won’t even bother linking to here. It’s sad for sure.
        omarchowdhury 7y ago
        Could it be that there aren't that many exciting new products coming out? Or is that blasphemy?
        TomMarius 7y ago
- ksahin 7y ago
  What do you mean? You can hunt your own product on PH now!
tmikaeld 7y ago
How are you different from Vectera.com which does the same thing, but with persistent rooms too?
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks for your question! Afaik Vectera runs in your browser and focuses on sharing what's in it. CoScreen lives on OS-level so you can share and interact with any native window, browser or not. They also don't seem to support multiple users sharing windows at the same time side-by-side but please let us know if we're missing anything.
skue 7y ago
Congrats on the launch. This looks like one of those great ideas that works so much better than the old way that it feels obvious in hindsight. I’m curious how you handle different monitor resolutions?
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks a lot for the kind words! Great question, CoScreen shows shared windows based on their relative positions and sizes. So they appear in the same way for all participants. If there are huge difference between resolutions, the users will see either very small/large fonts but we still concluded after many prototypes that this is the best tradeoff. Feedback welcome nevertheless...
  - lima 7y ago
    So what you're saying is, you don't handle different monitor resolutions. My team is split between people with 4k or even 5k screens and wide-angle screens with lower pixel densities, so this would be an issue. Not sure how common that is, though.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Sorry for the misunderstanding - We do handle the translation of resolutions to create the same layout for everyone. In addition, you can actually pinch zoom into remote windows if necessary.
      - lima 7y ago
        Got it. Awesome!
fimdomeio 7y ago
Seems like a great idea. One question is visual data only shared among peers or does it pass through your servers?
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks! It goes through a central server so it can make it through corporate firewalls. This adds latency unfortunately but makes it more reliable for folks behind strange proxies and scales better for >2 users. But in any case, we'll enable P2P connections shortly so it won't go through the server if it doesn't have to, stay tuned. Sign up on our website and we'll let you know once it's out.
  - JoshTriplett 7y ago
    If you haven't already, you might consider adding end-to-end encryption, which will make people more comfortable with it going through your servers in the cases where it still needs to. Also, I'd assume you use video compression; keep in mind that encrypted video still reveals some information through sizes, especially if you have some idea of the kinds of applications users typically use.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Absolutely, it's already end to end encrypted but good point on metadata...
stanislavb 7y ago
Hey mate, congrats on the launch! You should verify CoScreen on SaaSHub https://www.saashub.com/coscreen https://www.saashub.com/coscreen
thawkins 7y ago
I gave up in fustration, the site has no real information, no system requirements, no installation information. does it run on linux? I like the idea but i have a department with 100 fedora workstations in it.
- mean_gene_1976 7y ago
  I am feeling the same way mate. I believe it’s only for macOS.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Thanks for your feedback, sorry if that wasn't clear. We'll fix our website. It's indeed macOS-only for now (we had to start somewhere). Here all steps to get started: https://support.coscreen.co/portal/kb/articles/getting-started-with-coscreen https://support.coscreen.co/portal/kb/articles/getting-start...
    - mean_gene_1976 7y ago
      Naw mate. Your good. I read the site in English and it said clearly macOS. No need to apologize. I was just trying to be nice. Site was cool. Maybe more documentation. Good luck to you.
      - coscreen 7y ago
        Thanks a lot!
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks as well, it's macOS-only for but we're working on other OSes. It should work on anything that runs macOS Mojave and higher and at least on 5-6 year old Mac Books.
  - greggman2 7y ago
    I'm curious how many Mac users have multiple monitors? I don't think I've ever seen a single one (I'm sure they exist). I see iMac users on one big monitor. I see MacBook/Air/Pro users either on their laptop or one monitor, usually with their laptop closed. Where as pretty much all Windows users in game dev seem to have 2 or more monitors. Are you expecting lots of mac users to buy a second monitor or use an iPad for this second monitor or is my experience just atypical and lots of mac users have 2 monitors?
coscreen 7y ago
UPDATE 1: Thanks so, so much for the huge interest & valuable feedback, please keep it coming! Here's a quick form for the many folks interested in Windows & Linux support, please help us prioritize: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3 UPDATE 2: As mentioned further below, we're also on Product Hunt today - check it out (and let's beat the boring marketing apps): https://www.producthunt.com/posts/coscreen https://www.producthunt.com/posts/coscreen
- coscreen 7y ago
  UPDATE 3: The OS survey link doesn't seem to work on some platforms, please use use the full link: https://teamcoscreen.typeform.com/to/IOJ8ql https://teamcoscreen.typeform.com/to/IOJ8ql
texasbigdata 7y ago
Not even remote. As a nontech worker its unbelievably helpful in a shared office too. I used to have a big screen tv and 2 keyboards and wireless mice at a coffee table in my office for just this problem, and a crazy (for normal humans) hdmi splitting setup that allowed for a byod of sorts. Great idea!
- coscreen 7y ago
  Agreed!
fragmede 7y ago
MPX, multi-pointers on X11/Linux systems was amazing, back when it first came out around 2005, and definitely seemed like the future of collaboration. I'm glad that someone's making a go at productizing the concept and building a company around using it for collaboration. it gets me sad to see cool tech languish add research projects because of barriers, whatever they may be, to have a sellable product. Some make it though; Ksplice is one such product that had a successful company and exit that I can think of.
em-bee 7y ago
i'd like to use this in a classroom setting where either every participant, or the moderator/teacher can see all shared windows but decide to feature only one or two of them. one way to do that would be the ability to minimize shared windows. the teacher (or anyone with moderator privileges) would be allowed to minimize windows, but also have a way to look at windows while minimized (as a teacher i want to see what everyone is doing on their own windows, while at the same time get the students to focus on a particular window.)
- coscreen 7y ago
  Great idea, we're already looking into educational use cases. Feel free to reach out directly if you want to discuss this further.

apetresc 7y ago

This looks like an amazing idea executed brilliantly–reminds me of Dropbox in that way. But I've been thinking about it for the last five minutes and I cannot figure out how you guys actually managed to implement this. What sorcery is at the root of this? How do you composite windows from two different machines into a single desktop on macOS?

nicoburns 7y ago
I assume it's not a real desktop, but a full-screen window of their app. And I guess it basically works via two-way machine control. Each person's computer is actually driving their own windows, but the software allows everyone to control everyone's (shared) windows, just like one-sided remote-control apps. It's a pretty clever idea!
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks both - here's how it works: 1. CoScreen captures each of your window to be shared individually. 2. It sends them across in a combined video feed per user with window positions & sizes. 3. On the receiving end, it creates actual native windows which are filled with the video streams of the corresponding windows. That way they look and feel like actual local windows. E.g. you can move & resize them like any other native windows. 4. Whenever you click or type into a remote window, the input is send across to the origin of the window and applied there.
  - JoeSmithson 7y ago
    This is so good! How does it work with selecting text and copy-pasting? In the Sublime Text example, can Bob overwrite Alice's clipboard.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      We're still figuring this out and will probably get inspired from remote desktop solutions. But reach out to us if you have specific ideas

jawnknee 7y ago

I want to see the actual product. Cool animations but a picture is worth 1000 words

qwnp 7y ago
The intro video on the homepage shows the actual software in action at around 53 seconds (mouse over the video to unveil the seek bar).
- coscreen 7y ago
  Exactly, here's the direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHI5-ne2F2I&feature=youtu.be&t=53 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHI5-ne2F2I&feature=youtu.be...
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    I thought this was vapourware. The best video you can show for this is your JIRA board where everyone can update it in realtime in a team meeting with remote teams. Don't bother with the animations, they make your product look not real! Very impressive.
    - coscreen 7y ago
      Thanks for your feedback. We felt that it's hard to get the concept across without showing both clients. But thanks again for the input, we'll show the real interactions more prominently.
      - andy_ppp 7y ago
        If you just show people using it for real work you will be okay
        coscreen 7y ago
        True, will do!

igetspam 7y ago

MacOS only. Leaves me (Linux) half our devs (Windows), all of our execs (Windows) out.

coscreen 7y ago
Yes unfortunately and yet only for now. We just started with Mac (coin toss) and now we'll do our best to cover all of them soon.
- mbreese 7y ago
  That's sad -- from your demo video, I thought you were supporting Windows too (the minesweeper window). You might want to make that more explicit.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Point taken, we only have a raw windows prototype so far.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Hey both, we were overwhelmed by the interest (and therefore also wrt. requests for Windows & Linux support) but we've just set up this form to help us prioritize the next platform CoScreen should run on: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3

stuqqq 7y ago

I am worried about screen sharing. Who knows what I could browse at work. I don’t want to mistakenly share my credit card number.

coscreen 7y ago
Even with CoScreen you only share screens/windows when you want to. You can go online/offline with a tap of a button and in any case it only shares windows on a display you choose.
downerending 7y ago
This is a very serious security concern, in my mind. I regularly type into the "wrong" window, due to (pick one) poorly designed UI or my stupidity. This is mostly harmless in my solo environment, although one does have to be careful about things like .bash_history and websites that might actually be listening for keystrokes and sending them upstream. Having a team window seems like it would make this a greater risk. On a different topic, I'm one of those people that can't stand pair programming and related--it destroys my ability to concentrate deeply on the problem in front of me.

googleisevil6 7y ago

I'm curious why somebody would start with a machinetosh? Windows is used way more than machinetosh on developer machines. Is it because: 1) Authors don't know the demographics? or 2) They think that Windows users wouldn't pay? (Not true I think) or some other reason?

billconan 7y ago
it might be a technical reason sometimes. Does windows provide an API for you to capture a window, instead of a desktop on a specific screen?
- coscreen 7y ago
  True, just in this case we just went with Mac because we used it personally. Windows might actually have been easier because macOS gets increasingly restrictive (e.g. with Catalina). Nevertheless, glad we made it and we'll do our best to support all major OSes.
- googleisevil6 7y ago
  I don't want to make this a game of one upmanship but I'd be surprised if there are GUI things you could do on a machinetosh that you cannot do on Windows.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Agreed, hopefully Windows will be easier though. Getting mac done well gets harder with every macOS update...
    - LeonB 7y ago
      Windows APIs give great info about size and position of windows. Challenging part is really the per monitor scaling, but it’s not impossible either. Great product, top work
      - 7y ago

purple-again 7y ago

From a security standpoint can you discuss the life of my data as it goes from my computer, through your service, and into my coworkers computer. What is stored where? Who at your company can access what? Thank you in advance for any information you are able to provide.

coscreen 7y ago
Hi there, we're capturing windows at the client, send them across through our video bridge (to get through proxies & firewalls and scale beyond 2+ users per channel) and then the windows are shown on the remote end. We don't store any shared windows, videos, images, or audio data. We only capture anonymized usage stats to get an idea what we need to optimize for (e.g. # of sessions and users per session). Our security concept was recently approved after an extensive vendor risk assessment by a large global enterprise. This is a positive indication but obviously don't hesitate to drop us a mail if you want to discuss specific requirements!

t0mbstone 7y ago

If there's one thing I can't stand in a screen sharing app (I'm looking at you, Slack and Zoom), it's annoying overlays. I want to be able to open up my IDE, go full screen with it, and have zero overlays visible. The only tool I've been able to find that lets me do this is Tuple (tuple.app), which is the closest thing I've found to Screenhero (which was my favorite screen sharing and pair programming app back in the day).

coscreen 7y ago
Agreed! Soon CoScreen's UI controls will get hidden automatically so you won't see anything but shared windows.
- t0mbstone 7y ago
  That's awesome, and I'm glad to hear it! If I could make a tiny suggestion: Why not hide the coscreen functionality under a little system tray icon with a pop-out menu? That way, it's invisible, but still easy to get to.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Good point, we had thought about it but wondered if users would find it. But we'll look into it based on your feedback...
SkyPuncher 7y ago
Zoom's overlay controls are pretty great too

jedberg 7y ago

What if I only have one screen?

Biganon 7y ago
"It also works great if you only have one screen"
- jedberg 7y ago
  Where do you see that? I can't find that on the page. Also, how?
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Great question - here's how it works: If you only have one display (e.g. while you're on the run) it can still share the windows on this desktop but you can share/unshare all of them with a single click on the display icon next to your user. You can also auto-minimize all your windows when joining a room.
    - jedberg 7y ago
      Ok so it's an all or nothing type thing? I'm either sharing my whole screen or none of it? Still definitely useful! Just trying to learn the limitations. This is awesome by the way, I'll definitely be checking it out!
      - coscreen 7y ago
        Exactly - all your windows on your screen to be specific, so e.g. not your desktop background or files on your desktop. We're considering adding the ability to pick individual windows but feedback welcome...
        gotrythis 7y ago
        On the Mac, could you assign a "spaces" virtual desktop to be shared with coscreen? Then you can just 3 finger swipe between a private screen and the shared one.

zlsa 7y ago

This is a great idea, and your implementation of it looks awesome! I don't have a use for it at the moment, but I'm bookmarking it for later. A bit of feedback on your website: the yellow you've chosen is nearly impossible to read on my monitor, especially with the thin font used in "Sign up".

coscreen 7y ago
Thanks for your feedback, we'll fix that asap...

zimbatm 7y ago

This looks like a cool product if both people have a secondary screen. A similar but much more low-key solution that I love using is tmate[1]. Tmate is a tmux session that can be shared over SSH. It's super easy to install and anyone who has a SSH client can join in two seconds. It's great for pairing sessions if both developers are into vim or emacs editors. Or just to show a quick thing. [1]: https://tmate.io/ https://tmate.io/

coscreen 7y ago
Thanks for sharing! It's true that CoScreen works best with multiple screens but it also works with just one screen (details in a comment on this thread). Tmate is indeed awesome as long as you're working within Terminal.

jaequery 7y ago

Does this require installing a software on your computer? Or is this purely browser based? Or is it Java?

coscreen 7y ago
It's a native macOS app you need to install, other operating systems and a web client will follow!
- Etheryte 7y ago
  This would be very nice to have up and front on the landing page. I bent over backwards looking for OS compatibility.
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Got it, we'll fix it today.

rihegher 7y ago

There are two job positions to join their team as well. I guess they could even use their own tool during a test interview.

coscreen 7y ago
Spot on ;)

BillSaysThis 7y ago

Pricing info would be great, free during beta is nice but for my company at least we would need to know the cost upfront.

coscreen 7y ago
Fully understood, we haven't finalized it and it will likely be free for at least 3 months but then it will likely be in line with Slack, Zoom, etc.

kisna72 7y ago

Looks like a pretty neat product. Congrats on the launch

coscreen 7y ago
Thanks a lot!

danenania 7y ago

Looks very cool! On security, when you say encrypted in realtime, does this mean client-side encryption? Is the server trusted?

coscreen 7y ago
We're building on Jitsi's videobridge, check out the details here: https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/ https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/

ticktockten 7y ago

Look forward to using this in linux! Definitely a tool I would use.

coscreen 7y ago
Glad to hear, stay tuned
coscreen 7y ago
Here's a quick form where you can capture your interest and stay in the loop: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3

mncharity 7y ago

Some cities have meetups doing coding katas using pair/mob programming. Eg [1]. Perhaps a demo opportunity? Though the mac-only could be an issue. Fwiw, doing a 3D "desktop" on linux a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised by electron's desktopCapturer for visuals. But multi-source input... X was ok-ish, Wayland not. [1] https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Software-Crafters/ https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Software-Crafters/

coscreen 7y ago
Great idea! We'll follow-up. Also thanks for the hint, we'll use it as a starting point for Linux

OmarIsmail 7y ago

This is brilliant. Super easy mental model. Super easy to use (just drag and drop!). No friction. This is going to be big, whether it's you guys (hopefully!) or someone else that steals this idea (boo!) And I wouldn't pay too much attention to the Windows/Linux users in the very early days if it's too much of a development burden. There are tons of tech forward companies that are mac-only that are a large enough market to build momentum. If the windows/linux people want it make them put their money where their mouth is and charge them in some way. It costs nothing for them to say "Build this for me!" but they already have enough info from the demos and mac app to make a purchasing decision. So if they're serious get some money from them. If you do a pre-order and say "if it's not released in 3 months you get your money back" that should be enough signal to know if they really want it or not. Congrats! Not many people make something this good. Now don't screw it up :) And if you're not part of YC already you should do a late application for the W20 batch.

coscreen 7y ago
Thanks so much, feedback like this makes this worth it! We'll do our best and thanks for the great advice!
MrQuincle 7y ago
I bet Linux is not even possible. How do you force windows to be at the same location across different systems. I use i3. There are plenty of other tiling managers. This is not gonna be cross-platform. Just my two cents.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Afaik each OS has hooks that lets apps with the required permissions set the location & measurements of other windows. So we're optimistic but obviously we're not done yet.
- robgibbons 7y ago
  Shouldn't be too hard. The wmctrl package, for example, supports a whole bunch of different window managers.

lima 7y ago

Excellent idea, brilliantly executed. But as a CTO, I would be concerned about the security implications. It makes sense to route traffic via a central server because P2P does not scale to large numbers of participants (which is why things like the Jitsi Videobridge exist despite WebRTC P2P being a thing), but it means your customers have to trust you not to get hacked, be compelled to, or otherwise misplace/record sessions. Since peers can interact with the remote windows, this is basically a remote control tool, and getting hacked also means being able to inject keystrokes or otherwise compromise clients (as recently demonstrated by TeamViewer). For security-critical things like SRE work this is a particularly big concern. Adding end-to-end encryption would alleviate some of these concerns and reduce the attack surface to implementation mistakes or compromised software updates, which is far easier to reason about. Perhaps it's not a concern for a small startup, but it's definitely something larger companies worry about. Please add support for other platforms and add end-to-end encryption, because I really want to use this! As suggested by someone else, we would definitely pre-order licenses for Linux and Windows.

gfodor 7y ago
I am pretty sure that E2E encryption is impossible today if you are using a WebRTC SFU since there's no spec for it. The closest thing is PERC Lite [1] which no browsers support, though maybe you could cobble something together native. Is there some path I didn't know about? 1. https://www.meetecho.com/blog/meetecho-and-cosmo-strike-again-perc-lite-integration-in-janus/ https://www.meetecho.com/blog/meetecho-and-cosmo-strike-agai...
- lima 7y ago
  I don't know about browsers, but I know that Signal implements E2E-encrypted phone calls using WebRTC for signalling.
  - wichert 7y ago
    WebRTC does not do signalling - that is the one part that you always have to provide yourself. WebRTC provides the peer descriptions and ICE candidates that you need to transport to the other party/parties.

moralestapia 7y ago

Very good idea I love it! I foresee and amazing future for you, just don't give up, keep it going for as long as you can. Cheers!

coscreen 7y ago
Thanks a lot for your support!

brightball 7y ago

Love it. Hope you eventually have an Ubuntu client.

coscreen 7y ago
We'll do our best, please keep bugging us on this ;)

miki123211 7y ago

How do you handle/plan to handle accessibility? If it grows, Sooner or later, a company which needs a11y for legal reasons might consider your product, so it's important.

coscreen 7y ago
We're actually using macOS accessibility APIs to manage local and remote windows and are therefore optimistic we can sort this out - eg by moving windows via keyboard. Detailed requirements are welcome!

bradknowles 7y ago

Is it possible to default to sharing in read-only mode? I've got plenty of stuff I'd be happy to share with other people to let them look, but I don't want them messing things up. I'd be fine allowing them write access on a per-user/per-window basis, but I'd like to default to read-only.

coscreen 7y ago
We decided for an "open-first" approach unlike most other apps but are considering adding a flag to configure this. Feedback welcome!

techntoke 7y ago

So basically this just turns a second display into a screen share where multiple users can share their app windows? Seems like this could have been tackled 95% with existing open source software and supported on multiple platforms.

BjoernKW 7y ago
Given that another commenter likened CoScreen to Dropbox in that it is an "amazing idea executed brilliantly" it seems only fair that they've already got their very own Dropbox comment now. 95% isn't 100%. A mere assemblage of tools isn't a finished, polished, well-designed, reliable product.
- coscreen 7y ago
  Thanks both, time will tell if we have the remaining 5%! Obviously we'd love this to be as legendary in 12 years from now ;)

jacobn 7y ago

This is huge. Love the concept. My company is 100% remote, and we're having all the pain points with Zoom that have already been mentioned. We also all have more than one monitor. But we're on windows. Get that pre-order form online already! ;)

aagha 7y ago
I literally started typing a note to my team to check this out and say: We're going to be trying this out after the holiday, and then realized it was wasn't Window's ready. Super bummed.
- keithnz 7y ago
  yep, not obvious from the home screen it isn't for windows... the "Now available for MacOS" gave me the impression it was originally for windows... also no hint the company is even interested in windows...? UPDATE: yes, in their https://www.coscreen.co/feedback https://www.coscreen.co/feedback they ask about windows support...
  - coscreen 7y ago
    Sorry for letting you all wait for the Windows client. We'll work on it but we had to start somewhere and coin-flipped on Mac, kind off. As mentioned further below, CoScreen is built mostly on an platform-agnostic stack so we hope it won't be a gargantuan effort to support Windows. But stay tuned (and sign up if you want to stay in the loop).
- coscreen 7y ago
  Sorry for that - we've just set up this form to gather interest & get feedback on which OS to prioritize next: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3 Please fill it out and you'll hear from us!
walrus01 7y ago
I honestly don't understand why more companies haven't dropped Zoom after their recent major lapses in security practices: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=zoom+mac+os+security https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=zoom+ma... It leaves me with very little confidence that the Zoom client for Windows doesn't have some gaping undiscovered vulnerability in it.

paogli 7y ago

Ok, so where is the actual product? There’s no way to try it as a demo and the demo shown in the video is a fake one - yes, even the one after the flat animations with the real desktop. My impression is that the product hasn’t been built yet or is even ready for beta. Is this another one of those ‘MVP’ landing pages that fools the consumer into believing there is a product to gather reception? Thanks.

coscreen 7y ago
It actually exists and you can use it today (note: mac only for now): https://www.coscreen.co/getstarted https://www.coscreen.co/getstarted => Gets you to the download page, download the DMG, launch the app, collaborate...

Urgo 7y ago

Not to beat a dead horse here but my first thought was this is awesome! I want to try this out with the team! Then noticed mac only. Nevermind... Repost to HN when its out for windows please!

coscreen 7y ago
We'll do, promised.
coscreen 7y ago
To follow-up: we'll definitely post on HN once we get there, in the meantime we'd love your feedback on OSes we should support - here's a quick poll: https://shorturl.at/koJX3 https://shorturl.at/koJX3

est 7y ago

This is my child dream product ever since I learned about OLE and DCOM. A draggable & sharable window object, or remote objects embeddable in any window. It's a shame they didn't evolve down to that path. Good job OP!

coscreen 7y ago
Thank you, /almost/ there ;)

winrid 7y ago

Why not just share that secondary screen with Zoom? Am I missing some value add?

coscreen 7y ago
Because only one user can do that at a time (sharing as well as remote control afaik) and the others have to watch & listen. With CoScreen, multiple users can share & interact simultaneously or also switch much more quickly between content of each other and interact with it side by side (e.g. Alice's window right next to Bob's window).

vijaybritto 7y ago

I don't know why it was decided to post in HN before explaining everything clearly in the text, but its good to see that the OP has been explaining as much as possible to everyone. Most of it is repeat questions about monitors, network security and OS compatibility(welcome to real world use cases :)). Adding this in the page beforehand would have changed the mood and tone in this comment section today :D Good luck with the product! For the next update please explain things before hand in your page!

coscreen 7y ago
Will do, most details were actually covered on our support page (https://support.coscreen.co/ https://support.coscreen.co/) and we didn't want to overload the homepage with too many details but we're learning & iterating all the time so thanks for your feedback!

softwarelimits 7y ago

I wanted to know what this is but was not able to read the text because somebody had the idea that text on a website should be extremely thin and low contrast. The idea of making your text as hard as possible to read is a very bad one.

coscreen 7y ago
Thanks for your feedback, this is fixed. Let us know if you face any further issues.

t0ddbonzalez 7y ago

>"... entirely free during the public beta..." What makes it different from (or better than) free versions of Zoom or Webex Teams?

coscreen 7y ago
The interactivity that multiple users can share & control at the same time and also that it takes just one step to connect. But obviously CoScreen is meant for everyone & every use case, it works best for teams that collaborate again and again with the same group of peers.

fuddle 7y ago

Sounds interesting. I would like to see a video of the product on the home page before using it.

coscreen 7y ago
Thanks for your feedback. We'll needed to get the general concept across first as it's tough to explain our approach without showing both sides. Input & ideas welcome! But here's the part of the video that shows the app (note: Linux & Windows isn't released yet, but you can see exactly how it works for an individual user) https://youtu.be/gHI5-ne2F2I?t=53 https://youtu.be/gHI5-ne2F2I?t=53

vkdelta 7y ago

Can I replace teamviewer with this? Their pricing is too expensive.

coscreen 7y ago
Just give CoScreen a try and let us know what you think. Note that we'll probably also charge for CoScreen one day but we'll do our best to keep it affordable.