How to Click Links in a Screen Share on Mac

A link in someone else’s screen share can’t be clicked or copied: what you see is only a moving picture of their screen. The usual fixes are asking for it in the chat or taking a screenshot and pulling the text out with Live Text. With Nab you freeze your screen and click the link right where it is.

The built-in ways

Ask for it in the chat. It’s the simplest route, and it’s what Microsoft itself suggests for Teams. It works when the presenter notices your message and has a moment to paste the link.

Ask for remote control. In Zoom, open View Options and choose Request Remote Control; the presenter has to approve, and it only works when they’re using the desktop app. In Teams the same thing is called Take control, and an organisation’s admin can switch it off. Either way, a link you click opens on their computer, not yours. Zoom has an option to share the clipboard between the two computers, but people report that it’s unreliable, and Teams blocks copy and paste across by design. Google Meet has no remote control at all: you can zoom, scroll or pop the shared screen out into its own window, and that’s it.

Take a screenshot and use Live Text (macOS 13 or later).

1. Press ⌘⇧4 and drag a box around the link.
2. Click the thumbnail that appears in the corner within a few seconds, or open the screenshot from your Desktop in Preview.
3. Select the address, Control-click it and choose Open Link or Copy.
4. Delete the screenshot afterwards.

Ask Visual Intelligence (macOS 27). On Macs with Apple Intelligence turned on, pressing ⌘⇧6 and dragging over the link can offer a “Visit URL” action. It’s new, and early reviews say it’s hit and miss, with no way to copy the text it finds.

The AI features built into the meeting apps don’t help here. Zoom’s AI Companion can read text on shared slides, but only to write its meeting summary.

Where they fall short

• Chat depends on the presenter. They have to notice your message, stop talking and find the link, usually just as they’ve moved on to the next slide.
• Remote control is heavy. It needs their permission, an admin can block it, and the link still opens on their computer.
• The screenshot route takes four or five steps and leaves files on your Desktop. By the time you’ve done it, the slide has often changed.
• Visual Intelligence needs Apple Intelligence and macOS 27, and it doesn’t let you copy what it reads.

What you actually want is to stop the picture for a moment, click the link, and carry on listening.

With Nab

1. When the link is on screen, press ⌘⇧2. Your screen freezes; the call keeps going underneath.
2. Hover the link — it underlines — and click it to open it in your browser. To copy it instead, drag over it; it’s copied the moment you let go.
3. Press Esc to unfreeze.

The link opens on your Mac, in your own browser, and the presenter never has to stop. It works the same in Zoom, Teams, Meet, Webex or any other app, because Nab reads your screen, not the meeting.