> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.unify.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Watching & taking control

> The Meet screen-share controls, exactly — and what to use them for

Everything your assistant does on its computer can happen in front of you.
During a [Unify Meet](/communication/unify-meet) call you can open a live
view of its desktop, watch it work in real time, and — when you want hands
on the wheel — take over its mouse and keyboard yourself.

## The controls, in the call toolbar

The center of the Meet toolbar holds the screen-sharing controls: the
button for sharing **your** screen, and next to it a two-button pill for
the **assistant's** desktop.

| Button                                             | What it does                                                                          |
| -------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Share your screen**                              | Streams *your* screen to the assistant (it can see, never click)                      |
| **Show assistant screen** (computer icon)          | Swaps the main call view from the assistant's avatar to its **live desktop**          |
| **Enable mouse & keyboard control** (pointer icon) | Appears only while the screen is showing — lets *you* operate the assistant's machine |

The assistant-desktop buttons unlock in stages, and the tooltip tells you
where you are: *"Available after assistant joins"* until the call is fully
up, then *"Assistant desktop is starting up…"* while the machine wakes
(calls connect voice-first, so you're talking well before this — the
button enables mid-call, no reconnect needed), and finally **Show
assistant screen** when everything's ready.

## Watching: the live desktop view

Click **Show assistant screen** and the main call area becomes the
assistant's actual desktop, streaming live — you'll see a brief *"Starting
assistant screen sharing..."* and then the machine itself. Browser tabs
opening, text being typed, the file manager, the terminal: whatever the
assistant is doing, as it does it.

A few things about the view:

* **It's view-only by default.** A transparent guard sits over the screen
  — hover it and you'll see *"Enable interactive mode to take control"*.
  Your clicks touch nothing until you explicitly opt in.
* **It scales with the window.** The desktop fits itself to the call
  window, whether that's the full-size dialog, a floating window, or
  docked above chat — and fullscreen is available for detail work. (If
  you shrink a floating call very small, the desktop controls tuck away
  until you enlarge it.)
* **Your assistant knows you're watching.** The moment you open or close
  the view it's told — *"User enabled assistant screen sharing"* — so it
  narrates naturally while you watch and never treats the screen as
  private.
* **Both directions at once.** Sharing your own screen doesn't conflict:
  your share (or camera) rides along as a small picture-in-picture in the
  corner while the assistant's desktop fills the main view, and you can
  maximize or minimize your self-view at any time.

Click **Hide assistant screen** to return to the avatar; the assistant's
work carries on either way.

## Taking control

With the screen showing, the pointer button toggles **interactive mode** —
you'll see *"Interactive mode enabled."* and the guard overlay lifts. From
that moment your mouse and keyboard drive the assistant's machine
directly:

* **Your assistant steps back.** It's notified the instant you take over
  ("User took remote control of assistant desktop") and pauses its own
  computer actions rather than fighting you for the mouse. It stays on the
  call, watching and talking with you.
* **You have the full machine.** Open and close apps, click through the
  browser, type in the terminal — anything the assistant can do at its
  desk, you can do from yours.
* **Hand back any time.** Toggle again (*"View-only mode enabled."*) or
  just hide the screen. Your assistant is told control was released and
  picks the work back up, taking a fresh look at the screen to account
  for anything you changed.

This is true joint work on one machine — you drive while it watches, it
drives while you watch, swapping as often as you like within the call.

## What the mode is for

**Seeing the apps it's using.** The live view is the honest answer to
"what is it actually doing?" — watch it fill in the web form, work the
spreadsheet, run the script. It's the natural companion to a first run of
anything new: a freshly taught workflow, a new [task](/tasks/overview)
firing, a tool it hasn't used before.

**Navigating its filesystem — both ways.** The assistant's machine has a
[persistent workspace](/their-computer/what-it-does) — the `Attachments`
folder where your files land, the outputs it has produced, everything it
has downloaded and built. The screen view is how you explore it:

* **Watch it navigate.** Ask — *"show me what's in the project folder"*,
  *"open the report you generated last week"* — and watch it work through
  the file manager or terminal on screen, narrating as it goes.
* **Or browse yourself.** Enable mouse & keyboard control and open the
  file manager with your own hands: poke through folders, open files,
  check what's actually on disk — exactly as you'd lean over a colleague's
  desk. (There's no separate file-transfer widget in the call; when you
  want a file *sent* to you, just ask — it arrives as a
  [chat attachment or email](/communication/overview) moments later.)

**Demonstrating and fixing.** For fiddly procedures, take control and do
it once while narrating — your assistant [learns from what it
sees](/learning/teaching). And when something's gone sideways, taking the
wheel to fix it directly beats describing the fix in words.

## Good habits

* **Watch the first run of anything new** — a small correction on run one
  beats a cleanup on run ten.
* **Talk while you drive.** The call is still live in both directions —
  the combination of your hands and your commentary is the richest
  teaching signal there is.
* **Never type secrets on its screen.** Passwords and API keys belong in
  the secure [Integrations flows](/integrations/permissions), not typed
  into a shared desktop — your assistant will never ask you to.