If you have already decided this is worth paying for, four products take money for it. They are usually discussed as if they were the same thing. They are not — one of them is not even a desktop application — and the difference matters more than any price on this page.
We make one of the four, so weigh this accordingly. Every figure below was read from each product’s own pages on 5 September 2026, and none of it is remembered. We have tested none of the other three and claim nothing about how well they work.
The four
HideMyShare is the closest to us: a Windows app hiding chosen windows from capture, at $59.96 for one computer, with a 7-day free trial of everything. It is the only product here shipping in twenty languages, and the only one that hides input-method candidate windows for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai. The full comparison is here.
Cloakly carries the longest feature list of the desktop tools — automatic cloaking rules, multi-monitor handling, a picture-in-picture preview of what your audience sees, taskbar and Alt-Tab hiding. $129 lifetime, or $39 a year. The full comparison is here.
Safe Screen Share is a browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Arc and Vivaldi. It blurs sensitive content inside web pages — matched things like emails and API keys, plus regions you pick. $49 or $59 lifetime. The full comparison is here.
Hushglass is ours: a Windows app that protects a chosen window from screen-share viewers only, covering it with an opaque Private content protected screen while it stays live and usable in front of you. $39 lifetime or $19 a year, with a free tier that never expires.
There are also free open-source tools that do this well, and if you do not mind a tool running code inside your other apps you may not need to pay anyone.
The question that removes one of them
Not price, and not “is it in a browser”.
A browser window is a window. All three desktop tools cover one exactly as they cover any other, so if what you need hidden is WhatsApp Web, a bank tab, your inbox or a second browser window, you do not need an extension for it — and buying one would leave every desktop app on your screen still uncovered.
The real question is narrower:
Do you need part of a page hidden while the rest of that same page stays visible and shared?
That is the one job a window-level tool genuinely cannot do. Sharing a dashboard with one API key covered, a spreadsheet with one salary column blanked, a support ticket with the customer’s phone number redacted while you discuss the rest — for those, only an extension works, because our unit is the whole window and it is either covered or it is not.
If your answer is no — and for most people it is, because the private thing is a whole window you did not want on screen at all — then this is a choice between three desktop apps, and the extension is solving a problem you do not have at a higher price.
What they cost
| Product | Lifetime | Yearly | Free tier | Covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hushglass | $39 | $19 | One window, no expiry | Any window, browsers included |
| Cloakly | $129 | $39 | One app, manual | Any window, browsers included |
| HideMyShare | $59.96 | — | None — 7-day trial | Any window, browsers included |
| Safe Screen Share | $49 / $59 | — | None — 14-day refund | Parts of a web page |
Three numbers are worth reading twice.
Cloakly’s yearly plan and our lifetime plan are both $39. What they charge annually, we charge once. Their lifetime is $129, which is 3.3 times ours.
HideMyShare’s $59.96 is shown as 60% off a $149.90 list price. We have no view on whether that list price has ever been charged; we mention it only because a struck-through number changes how $59.96 feels, and you should decide on the figure you would actually pay.
Safe Screen Share costs $49 to $59 — more than our lifetime — for coverage that stops at the edge of the browser. That is not an argument that it is overpriced. Selective in-page blurring is genuinely harder than covering a whole window, and it does things we cannot. It is an argument that price alone tells you very little here, which cuts against us as easily as for us.
Where the others win
Written honestly, because a comparison that finds no fault with itself is an advertisement.
- HideMyShare ships in twenty languages — Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and more, with RTL Arabic. We have four (English, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese), and the other two are English only.
- HideMyShare hides IME candidate windows for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai. Those floating character lists leak what you are typing and are not the window you protected. Nobody else in this category handles them.
- Cloakly hides the window from the taskbar and Alt-Tab, which we do not do. A protected window stays listed in both; only a minimised one has its preview swapped for its icon. Of everything on this page it is the one feature gap that could genuinely decide a purchase. The app carries a feedback button so the build order comes from users rather than from us guessing.
- Cloakly also lists auto-cloak rules, transparency modes and a preview of the viewer’s side. We weigh those lower and would rather say so than pad the list: our auto-protect needs no rules configured, and a preview answers is this working once, which the meeting’s own shared view already tells you. Multi-monitor is on their paid list and works on every tier of ours.
- Both of them offer trials with a defined end, which suits some people better than a free tier that never expires. It is a difference in shape rather than in generosity.
- Safe Screen Share hides regions inside a page, which none of the desktop tools can. If you genuinely need to share a page while covering one field on it, nothing else here does that job.
- Safe Screen Share is not tied to Windows. On a Mac, the three desktop tools here do not exist for you and it is the only paid option.
- All three launched before we did. We would not read more into that than it says — none of them publishes customer numbers and neither do we — but if being first through a new developer’s door is not something you want to be, that is a fair reason to pick one of them.
Where we think we win
- Price, and the shape of it. $39 once, against $129 once, $59.96 once, or $39 every year.
- The free tier is not a countdown. One window, protected permanently, no account and no card. If your private thing is a single chat window — which for most people it is — that may be the end of the decision, and we would rather say so than sell you something you do not need.
- Two computers on one licence. A work machine and a personal one, one purchase.
- Automatic protection of new windows on Pro, which we have and are not behind on. Protect any window and every new window from that application is covered within about a second — chat pop-outs, dialogs, new documents — with no rules to configure first.
- Nothing is injected into your other applications, the difference that separates us from the free tools.
- Viewers see a labelled cover, not a gap. They can tell something is deliberately private, which makes Hushglass a poor tool for deceiving anyone. We consider that a feature; not everyone will.
On languages, and on meeting apps we have not tested
Two gaps on paper, and they deserve straight answers rather than spin.
Languages. Since version 1.0.6 Hushglass speaks English, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese and follows your Windows language; HideMyShare speaks twenty. We will not pretend that gap is nothing. What we would add is that this app is a short list of the windows you already have open — identified by their own titles, in whatever language those already are — and one button marked Protect. It is closer to language-independent than most software, which matters most to anyone whose language is not yet among our four.
Meeting apps. HideMyShare names Tencent Meeting, Feishu/Lark and DingTalk. We name only what we have watched from the viewer’s side, which is why our list is shorter.
Here is the honest position: Hushglass does not work per application. It works at the Windows capture layer — a flag telling Windows itself to leave a window out of anything capturing the screen — so it has no idea which meeting app is running and no code that treats one differently from another. Anything using standard Windows screen capture should therefore see the protection.
That is a reason to expect it to work, not evidence that it does, and our claims rules do not let us list an app nobody has watched from the other side. The free tier costs nothing and needs no account: if you try it on one of those, write to hello@hushglass.com and tell us what you saw. What gets reported gets tested, and what passes gets named.
What we would rather you knew before paying us
- Our installer is not code-signed yet. Your browser will probably warn you about the download. We publish the SHA-256 and the exact byte count on the download page so you can verify the file yourself, and the reasoning is written up here. If you would rather not click through a warning at all, the same app is on the Microsoft Store, free. A Store install is signed by Microsoft, so neither your browser nor Windows warns you on the way in. A certificate for the installer is planned.
- No taskbar or Alt-Tab hiding, and no preview of the viewer’s side. A protected window stays listed; while it is minimised, its previews there show only its app icon.
- No trial, because there is a free tier instead. If one window is all you need, do not pay us.
- Protection requires sharing your entire screen. Share the protected app as a single window and it will be visible. This is true of every window-level tool here.
- Hardware capture still sees everything. A phone pointed at your monitor is outside what any software on this page can do.
The short version
Need part of a page covered while the rest of that page stays shared: buy the extension, and know that everything outside your browser stays uncovered. On a Mac: buy the extension, it is the only one here that exists for you.
A browser window you simply want hidden is not that case. Any of the three desktop tools covers it, along with everything else on your screen.
Typing in Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai, or you want the interface in your own language today: HideMyShare is the only one that has it.
Need a window gone from the taskbar and Alt-Tab, or a live preview of the viewer’s side: Cloakly has both.
A window kept off the share, on Windows, at the lowest price with two computers and a free tier that never expires: that is us, and you can find out for nothing before deciding anything.
Frequently asked questions
How should I choose between four products that all do the same job?
Two questions narrow it fast. First: do you need part of a page hidden while the rest of that same page stays shared? Only the browser extension does that, and if the answer is no it drops out — note that a browser window you simply want hidden is not this case, since all three desktop tools cover a browser window like any other. Second: do you need the interface in a language other than English, or input-method candidate windows hidden for Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai? That points at one product only. After those, it is price.
Do any of these hide windows from the taskbar and Alt-Tab as well?
Cloakly lists taskbar and Alt-Tab hiding among its paid features, and the free open-source WinHider and Invisiwind both offer it too. Hushglass does not: a protected window stays in your taskbar and your switcher. Since version 1.0.5 a minimised one shows its app icon there instead of its content, but one open on your screen still shows what is in it. If a window's presence in Alt-Tab is what gives you away rather than the window itself, we are not the tool for that.
Which of these are available in languages other than English?
HideMyShare, which ships twenty languages including Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and right-to-left Arabic. Hushglass has four since version 1.0.6: English, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, following your Windows language. The other two are English only.
Is the cheapest option a risk when the product is a privacy tool?
It is a fair instinct and we are the cheapest here, so we would say this either way: price is a poor signal of trustworthiness in both directions. Better tests are whether a product states plainly what it cannot do, whether it publishes a checksum you can verify against the file you downloaded, and whether it explains its mechanism instead of describing it as magic. Judge all four of these on that, ours included.