Piik is a free, MIT-licensed screen sharing tool for games, movie nights, drawings and photos, built so that one host can share with up to 20 friends who watch in a desktop or mobile browser without installing anything.

What it is

Piik is an open-source, TypeScript screen sharing project in the WebRTC and peer-to-peer space. It takes two forms: Piik App, a desktop application that can host a local room, produce a temporary public link, or connect to a site you run yourself, and a browser-based online version at demo.piik.tv. Viewers need neither, because they simply open the invitation link a friend sends and select Play if the picture does not start automatically. A self-hosted deployment, Piik Server, adds the web interface, room management and optional media forwarding.

The problem it solves is twofold. For viewers, it removes the usual requirement to install a desktop client before watching: friends join by invitation in a desktop or mobile browser, and only the host needs software. For anyone who wants to run the service themselves, it removes the need to stitch together separate web, room-management and media-forwarding components, because Piik Server is a standalone binary with the web interface built in — one program to host a site, with room data stored in SQLite.

Key capabilities

• Watch without installing: friends join a room by invitation in a desktop or mobile browser.
• Direct connections first: media travels between participants where possible (P2P), with automatic media forwarding (SFU) available on a self-hosted server as a fallback.
• Rooms the host controls, with invitation links, room codes and optional room passwords, sized for one host and up to 20 viewers.
• Sharing sources chosen from Piik App or an existing Piik site: a screen, a window, a browser tab or a camera, plus a microphone channel for commentary with input device selection and voice volume adjustment.
• Viewer-side controls including light and dark themes, playback controls, picture-in-picture and a connection topology view, with a header control labelled 中 / EN / ✦ for language and visual mode.
• Packaged delivery: Piik Server as piik-*-runtime.tar.gz for Linux x64 and via Docker Compose, and piik-app ZIP files whose names identify windows-amd64, darwin-arm64 (native capture requires macOS 13+) and linux-amd64.

Who uses it and how

• Small groups of friends sharing games, movie nights, drawings or photos, with one host and up to 20 viewers in a room.
• Hosts who cannot or will not install software, sharing from a desktop browser or, on a phone with browser camera support, from the camera through the online version at demo.piik.tv.
• Self-hosters deploying Piik Server on a Linux x64 server with their own domain, an HTTPS reverse proxy and a configured STUN address, then connecting through Piik App or a browser.
• Operators who want invitations and optional room passwords under their own control and room data kept in their own SQLite database, including container deployments.

Getting started

To watch, open the invitation link and select Play if the picture does not start automatically; to share, download Piik App (a ZIP beginning with piik-app) and choose Public invite, or create a room in the online version. Self-hosters download the Linux x64 Server package, extract it, run ./piik-server and open http://localhost:8787, or use the Docker Compose setup.

How it compares

The facts provided do not name any paid products or similar screen sharing tools, so Piik cannot be contrasted against specific alternatives here. On the evidence given, it stands alone in this registry.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster takes on real operational work: a Linux x64 server, a domain, an HTTPS reverse proxy, a STUN address and the SQLite room database behind invitations and room state. It is a poor fit for anyone who needs screen sharing that always connects on restrictive networks without a self-hosted SFU, since the P2P-only modes — the App's temporary public link and the online version — may fail there. Two further limits are documented in the README: the macOS and Linux apps have not yet been tested on physical devices, and browser capture requires HTTPS or localhost.

./piik-server