How to play a YouTube video on Zoom with sound

Share the screen with Share sound and Optimize for video clip

This is the way to use when people need to watch the video as well as hear it.

1. Open the video on YouTube, and pause it at the start.
2. In the meeting, click Share Screen and choose your browser’s window.
3. Tick “Optimize for video clip”, which also ticks “Share sound”. Open the menu next to Share sound and choose Stereo (high fidelity) if the video has music.
4. Click Share, then play the video.

Optimize for video clip is Zoom’s setting for sharing a video, so the moving picture plays smoothly for everyone.

Full screen: if you shared the browser window, going full screen can change what Zoom shows. Share your whole screen instead if you want the video full screen, or use YouTube’s theatre mode.

The first time you share sound on a Mac, Zoom installs its own audio device, ZoomAudioDevice. Let it. Share sound sends every sound your Mac makes while you share, not only the video.

Share Computer Audio only

If the meeting only needs to hear the video, click Share Screen, open the Advanced tab, choose Computer Audio, and click Share. Nobody sees your screen.

Everyone hears all of your Mac’s sound, notifications included, and it’s still a share, so it ends when someone else starts sharing. Your voice and the video are set separately: one by your mic, one by the volume in YouTube.

Send just the YouTube tab, with no share

Zoom hears one microphone. If the YouTube tab is mixed into that microphone with your voice, the meeting hears both, and nothing else from your Mac, without you sharing anything.

Patch, which we make, runs on a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later. It mixes your mic and the sounds you add into a virtual mic called Patch Mix. Its free extension, Patch for Chrome, sends one browser tab into Patch: only the tab you choose, only after you click. It works in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Arc.

1. Add a Chrome tab in Patch. Install Patch, add your microphone as a source, then open the add-source list and choose “Add a Chrome tab”.
2. Add Patch for Chrome. Add Patch for Chrome from the Chrome Web Store, in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Arc. Chrome asks once about your microphone; that only lets Patch for Chrome find the Patch speaker. It never listens.
3. Pin it. Click the puzzle piece in the browser toolbar, then the pin next to Patch.
4. Send the YouTube tab. Open the video on YouTube. Click Patch in the toolbar, then Send this tab.
5. Choose Patch Mix in Zoom. In Zoom’s Settings › Audio, set Microphone to Patch Mix and Speaker to your headphones.
6. Go live. Click Go live in Patch. From then on the meeting hears your voice and the YouTube tab together, with no share.

Click Stop when the video ends, or click Patch on another tab to send that one instead. If the tab reloads or you leave YouTube in it, Patch stops sending it, so send it again. This is sound only; for the picture, see the questions below. The same set-up works for any tab in any call app that lets you choose a microphone: share a tab’s audio in a call.

Before the meeting

• Rehearse the level. With Patch for Chrome, the YouTube tab goes quiet in the browser and you hear it through Patch, so you hear exactly what the meeting hears. Play a loud part and set the tab’s fader in Patch against your voice; a limiter on the mix keeps a loud clip from clipping.
• Original sound for musicians. In Zoom’s Settings, choose Audio, and under Microphone modes choose “Original sound for musicians”, so Zoom’s noise suppression doesn’t remove the music in the video.
• Headphones as the speaker. In Zoom’s audio settings, choose your headphones as the speaker, never Patch Pass-Thru, or the meeting hears itself.

For background music rather than one video, see play music on Zoom.

Why there’s no sound, and the fix

• Share sound wasn’t ticked when you clicked Share. Stop sharing, tick it, share again.
• The video started first. Pause it and play it again once you’re sharing.
• The Mac’s permission. Zoom must be allowed under Screen & System Audio Recording in Privacy & Security. See no sound when screen sharing.
• Sound cuts in and out. That’s Zoom’s noise suppression: choose Original sound for musicians.
• The tab is muted (when sharing). Check YouTube’s own volume, and that the tab isn’t muted in the browser. With Patch for Chrome the tab goes quiet in the browser on purpose; that’s normal.
• With Patch: check that Zoom’s microphone is Patch Mix, that you clicked Go live, that Patch’s audio component is installed and up to date (Settings › Audio component in Patch), and click Send this tab again if the tab reloaded.

Questions