
Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool - coscreen
http://coscreen.co
======
coscreen
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

~~~
thawkins
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.

~~~
coscreen
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
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?

~~~
mistersquid
Professional Mac user here.

Over the last decade, I’ve worked in shops supporting Macs (as well as other
OSes) along with other Mac-using developers and designers.

All my Mac-using colleagues have dual-or-higher monitor setups.

~~~
coscreen
Thanks both. In corporate environments we've seen more software developers who
have a Mac with multiple screens (often one of them vertical for code) than
with just one. But we were unable to find any reliable stats and it's an
ongoing debate in how far multiple screens (vs. just hire resolutions/more
pixels on one screen actually improve performance - see
[https://lifehacker.com/is-the-multiple-monitor-
productivity-...](https://lifehacker.com/is-the-multiple-monitor-productivity-
boost-a-myth-5616859).

In any case, CoScreen also works great with just one screen and you can
share/unshare with a single tap of a button.

------
lima
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
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-
agai...](https://www.meetecho.com/blog/meetecho-and-cosmo-strike-again-perc-
lite-integration-in-janus/)

~~~
lima
I don't know about browsers, but I know that Signal implements E2E-encrypted
phone calls using WebRTC for signalling.

~~~
wichert
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.

------
OmarIsmail
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.

~~~
MrQuincle
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.

~~~
robgibbons
Shouldn't be too hard. The wmctrl package, for example, supports a whole bunch
of different window managers.

~~~
coscreen
Thanks for the hint!

------
apetresc
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
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
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
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
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

~~~
nicoburns
If everyone could have separate clipboards, but still copy from and paste into
each other's windows, that would be ideal.

Also: this would be a major feature request from me. The ability for me to
paste code into someone's else text editor (or copy out an error message) when
I'm helping them would be a major productivity boost.

~~~
coscreen
We hear you and will prioritize this. Some remote desktop and virtual desktop
solutions enable you to choose local or remote clipboards through a slight
tweak of the traditional/locally applied shortcuts (e.g. Command + V), we'll
check this out as well.

------
zimbatm
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
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.

------
purple-again
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
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!

------
stuqqq
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.

~~~
downerending
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.

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

~~~
qwnp
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
Exactly, here's the direct link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHI5-ne2F2I&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHI5-ne2F2I&feature=youtu.be&t=53)

~~~
andy_ppp
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
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
If you just show people using it for real work you will be okay

~~~
coscreen
True, will do!

------
jacobn
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
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
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
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).

------
vijaybritto
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
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!

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

~~~
coscreen
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
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
Great idea! We'll follow-up.

Also thanks for the hint, we'll use it as a starting point for Linux

------
t0mbstone
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
Agreed! Soon CoScreen's UI controls will get hidden automatically so you won't
see anything but shared windows.

~~~
t0mbstone
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
Good point, we had thought about it but wondered if users would find it. But
we'll look into it based on your feedback...

------
zlsa
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
Thanks for your feedback, we'll fix that asap...

------
techntoke
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
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
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 ;)

------
Urgo
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
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)

------
paogli
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
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...

------
rihegher
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
Spot on ;)

------
BillSaysThis
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
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.

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

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

~~~
coscreen
It's a native macOS app you need to install, other operating systems and a web
client will follow!

~~~
Etheryte
This would be very nice to have up and front on the landing page. I bent over
backwards looking for OS compatibility.

~~~
coscreen
Got it, we'll fix it today.

------
softwarelimits
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
Thanks for your feedback, this is fixed. Let us know if you face any further
issues.

------
est
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
Thank you, /almost/ there ;)

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

~~~
coscreen
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
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
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)

------
jedberg
What if I only have one screen?

~~~
Biganon
"It also works great if you only have one screen"

~~~
jedberg
Where do you see that? I can't find that on the page.

Also, how?

~~~
coscreen
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
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
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
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.

~~~
Jarwain
Could do this with windows 10 and its "virtual desktop" too!

~~~
coscreen
Yeah we're considering this as it's indeed quite consistent between mac &
windows but it will take a while to figure out...

------
miki123211
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
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!

------
brightball
Love it. Hope you eventually have an Ubuntu client.

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

------
moralestapia
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
Thanks a lot for your support!

------
t0ddbonzalez
>"... entirely free during the public beta..."

What makes it different from (or better than) free versions of Zoom or Webex
Teams?

~~~
coscreen
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.

------
danenania
Looks very cool!

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

~~~
coscreen
We're building on Jitsi's videobridge, check out the details here:
[https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/](https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/)

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

~~~
coscreen
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)

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

~~~
coscreen
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).

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

~~~
coscreen
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.

------
kisna72
Looks like a pretty neat product. Congrats on the launch

~~~
coscreen
Thanks a lot!

------
googleisevil6
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?

~~~
AtomicOrbital
looking forward to using this once it rolls to linux

~~~
coscreen
Btw, we've just set up this quick survey to help us prioritize operating
systems. Feel free to sign up & we'll keep you in the loop...

