Written by Cihat Gündüz

Description: Level up your screen sharing experience with the latest features in ScreenCaptureKit. Explore the built-in system picker, Presenter Overlay, and screenshot capabilities, and learn how to incorporate these features into your existing ScreenCaptureKit app or game.

Presenter Overlay

• Elevates the presenters presence by including presenter on top of shared content
• Small overlay: Places presenter in a movable window

• Large overlay: Separates the presenters face & body from the background & layers screen content between them (more immersive)

• Overlay integrated in SCStream – video menu bar will show automatically, user controls sharing there

• User can control the stream there & customize things like camera / microphone effects
• Currently content frames sent to its process from ScreenCaptureKit
• Now when camera is started overlay available in video menu item
• ScreenCaptureKit will take the camera and apply the rendering to the selected stream – composite frames are automatic

• Apps get notified about presenter overlay started/stopped via SCStream delegate method stream(_:outputEffectDidStart:)
• Considerations to take: Hide camera view when turned on, update app UI, optimize experience (higher frame rates)

Screen sharing picker

• SCContentFilter from SCShareableContent used, new: get content filter from the picker
• Content can now also be picked from window menu directly
• New SCContentSharingPicker acts as interface between app and OS
• Built-in system-level content picker
• Comes with per-stream customization

Usage example:

// Set up content sharing picker instance
let picker = SCContentSharingPicker.shared()
picker.addObserver(self)
picker.active = true

// show system level picker button
func showSystemPicker(sender: UIButton!) {
    picker.present(for stream: nil, using contentStyle:.window)
}

// observer call back for picker
func contentSharingPicker(_ picker: SCContentSharingPicker, didUpdateWith filter:                                          
SCContentFilter, for stream: SCStream?) {
   if let stream = stream {
        stream.updateContentFilter(filter)
    } else {
        let stream = SCStream(filter: filter, configuration: config, delegate: self)
    }
}

• There are also didFailWith error and didCancel for stream delegate methods
• Use SCContentSharingPickerConfiguration with options like excludedBundleIDs or allowsRepicking to configure

Screenshot

• Features like advanced rendering by app or window, multiple pixel formats & color spaces, cursor visibility etc. are available
• New API is asynchronous, choose between CMSampleBuffer (has format options) and CGImage
• Similar options & setup flow as screen capture
• Transition from CGWindowListCreateImage by using options in SCStreamConfiguration
• List options provided in SCShareableContent
• There's a CGImage output format to migrate
• To start, use SCShareableContent with SCContentFilter and SCStreamConfiguration
• Then call SCScreenshotManager.captureScreenshot class method to receive a screenshot
• You can also use the new system picker to create the SCContentFilter instead of SCShareableContent

Taking a screenshot:

// Don't forget to customize the content you want in your screenshot
// Use SCShareableContent or SCContentSharingPicker to pick your content
let display = nil;

// Create your SCContentFilter and SCStreamConfiguration
// Customize these lines to use the content you want and desired config options
let myContentFilter = SCContentFilter(display: display,
                             excludingApplications: [],
                             exceptingWindows: []);
let myConfiguration = SCStreamConfiguration();

// Call the screenshot API and get your screenshot image
if let screenshot = try? await SCScreenshotManager.capture<#SampleBuffer|Image#>(contentFilter: myContentFilter, configuration:
                                                       myConfiguration) {
    print("Fetched screenshot.")
} else {
    print("Failed to fetch screenshot.")
}