How to hide your bookmarks bar in Zoom
It depends on which Zoom you use, and the difference matters more than anything else on this page.
- Zoom desktop app — no browser extension can help you, including this one. The app captures your screen outside Chrome, where nothing running inside Chrome can see it. Your options are manual, and they are below.
- Zoom in a browser tab — fully solvable, automatically.
If you use the Zoom desktop app
This is most people, and it is worth being blunt about: an extension runs inside Chrome and can only know about things Chrome knows about. When the Zoom desktop client captures your screen, it asks the operating system, not the browser. Chrome is never told. Any extension claiming to cover that case is claiming something it cannot do.
What actually works there:
- Share a specific window rather than your whole screen. Zoom's picker lets you choose one application window. If you pick a window that is not Chrome, your bookmarks bar was never in frame to begin with.
- If you are sharing Chrome itself, press Ctrl+Shift+B (⌘+Shift+B on a Mac) before you click Share, and put it back after.
- Keep a second Chrome profile for presenting, with a deliberately empty bar. More setup, but it is the only one of these that cannot be undone by forgetting.
If you use Zoom in a browser tab
Zoom on the web goes through Chrome's own screen-share API, exactly like Google Meet. Chrome knows the share started, so an extension can act on it — and Zoom on the web is one of the two surfaces Skrim is tested against end to end in a real browser.
Note that "Zoom on the web" means the meeting genuinely running in a browser tab. If clicking a Zoom link hands off to the installed application, you are in the first section, not this one.
Where Skrim comes in
Skrim is a free Chrome extension that does one thing: it watches for a screen share starting and takes your bookmarks bar down before the first frame goes out, then puts every bookmark back at the exact position it came from when the share ends. There is nothing to remember and nothing to press.
It makes no network requests of any kind — no server, no account, no
analytics — and that is a claim you can check rather than one you have to
take: the extension is source-available, and one grep for
fetch across the code comes back empty.
What it does not cover
- Desktop apps. The Zoom desktop client, the Loom desktop app, OBS and QuickTime capture outside Chrome entirely, where no extension can see them.
- Chrome's own share picker preview. On a site that asks for your screen the instant it loads, the thumbnail Chrome draws inside the picker can still show the bar for a moment. Google Meet and Zoom on the web both preview clean, but it is a limit of the picker, not something an extension can reach.
- Anything other than the bookmarks bar. Not your tabs, not your notifications, not your desktop. One bar is the whole job.
Have it happen on its own
Skrim is in review for the Chrome Web Store. One email when it ships, and nothing else.
We store your address and the date, and use it once — to tell you Skrim is out. See the privacy policy.