--- title: Show HN: Petal, open-source CoScreen/ScreenHero finally free description: Petal is an open source pair programming tool offering low-latency, high-resolution screensharing with remote control. Shared windows behave like native... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-petal-open-source-coscreen-screenhero-finally-free-mtoq9njpy twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Show HN: Petal, open-source CoScreen/ScreenHero finally free | daily.dev og:description: Petal is an open source pair programming tool offering low-latency, high-resolution screensharing with remote control. Shared windows behave like native... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-petal-open-source-coscreen-screenhero-finally-free-mtoq9njpy og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/mToQ9NjPY.png og:image:alt: Show HN: Petal, open-source CoScreen/ScreenHero finally free og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Show HN: Petal, open-source CoScreen/ScreenHero finally free **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Petal is an open source pair programming tool offering low-latency, high-resolution screensharing with remote control. Shared windows behave like native desktop windows rather than grid tiles, with labeled cursors for multiple simultaneous sharers. Rooms can be created instantly without links or scheduling. It runs on LiveKit video infrastructure, and self-hosters can point the same app at their own LiveKit server for full control over the stack. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 31 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-15). **TL;DR:** Reception is warm and nostalgic, with many former CoScreen/ScreenHero/Pop users expressing relief that a free, open-source alternative exists, and the founders actively engaging in the thread; the main friction point raised is AI-sounding marketing copy and some self-hosting setup friction. **Sentiment:** 78% positive · 18% mixed · 4% skeptical **The case for** - Multiple former CoScreen and ScreenHero users say they missed window-level sharing that competitors like Tuple, Pop, and Zoom/Meet don't replicate. - People appreciate that it's open source and that the original CoScreen founders are behind it and responsive in the thread. - Commenters value tools built specifically for pair programming and live collaboration over generic video call apps. **The pushback** - One commenter had a strong negative reaction to AI-generated-sounding marketing copy on the landing page, which the founders acknowledged. - Latency isn't yet as tuned as CoScreen was, per the founders themselves responding to a question. - Self-hosting currently requires rebuilding the desktop app with a baked-in backend URL, which one commenter found cumbersome. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Former users of CoScreen, ScreenHero, and Pop express gratitude and excitement, with the founders and even competitors' founders actively participating in a friendly, nostalgic thread. **Open questions** - Is there a way to point the released app at a self-hosted backend without rebuilding the desktop app? - How will Petal improve input-to-video latency compared to the LiveKit-based setup used at launch? **Highlights** > I really wonder if it’s just me, but I have a deeply visceral reaction to AI copywriting that is largely irrational I’m willing to admit. > The media server — traffic stays yours The product looks cool! It’s just… reading that sentence makes me __immediately__ lose all interest. > — [weakfish on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50095889) > Screenhero co-founder/CEO here — this is really great! It looks like we had similar feelings after leaving our acquiring companies with our products being sunset. Since leaving Slack, I've been building Pop with a new team. The first product we launched in 2020 is essentially Screenhero 2.0 (pop.com). Since then, we've been building an expanded product: a virtual office for remote teams, which is now almost ready for launch (there's a waitlist at https://new.pop.com). We've even got Wayland support in! We have plans to open source a part of the Wayland piece, which Petal could potentially use too. I do love this space, and wish more tools were about live collaboration — it feels so much more human and fun than single-player mode. I hope Petal becomes a growing community that thrives for the long haul! > — [jsherwani on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094088) > One of our engineers is working on a very low latency video/audio mode for gaming. The truth is Petal isn't yet as tuned as say CoScreen was for low latency. It's on our product roadmap to have a mode to support this though. Some of our engineers have discussed a totally p2p iroh based video transport and other ideas. LiveKit was the fastest/easiest way to get it to market, and it was something Till and I volunteered to pay for at the moment so we have an off-the-shelf cloud offering that is free and usable. From that perspective it has worked great. > — [thedracle on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50095496) > The self-hosting guide currently calls for running the token backend as well as LiveKit, then rebuilding the desktop app with the backend URL baked in. Is there a way to switch the released app to a self-hosted backend without rebuilding? > — [compounding-err on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50098031) > It's crazy because we dogfood Petal daily, and did so with CoScreen while it was alive... and we absolutely cannot live without it. I'm in Utah, and Till is in CA, so it's vital to our daily work. Truly I don't understand how people do remote work or collaboration these days... maybe they don't? Or maybe Zoom/Meet are good enough (I really truly think they aren't, it's an abusive horrible experience every time I am forced to use Zoom or Meet for anything). There just seems to be something sticky about them, but the people who try a CoScreen, Tuple, Pop, or other tool designed around collaboration I think become converted permanently, but getting people into that funnel is very very hard. > — [thedracle on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50096133) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50092470) · 115 points · 31 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Petal Brings Self-Hosted Screen Sharing to Your Desktop](https://daily.dev/posts/petal-brings-self-hosted-screen-sharing-to-your-desktop-bckm7fe29) · Noted · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Expanded technical preview availability for the GitHub Copilot app](https://daily.dev/posts/expanded-technical-preview-availability-for-the-github-copilot-app-w758b2dzo) · GitHub Changelog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [PairDrop](https://daily.dev/posts/pairdrop-k6x0grsjf) · Hacker News · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [I finally found a productivity tool my non-technical friends will actually use](https://daily.dev/posts/i-finally-found-a-productivity-tool-my-non-technical-friends-will-actually-use-7ljltwz0n) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-petal-open-source-coscreen-screenhero-finally-free-mtoq9njpy) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Show HN: Petal, open-source CoScreen/ScreenHero finally free","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-petal-open-source-coscreen-screenhero-finally-free-mtoq9njpy","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-petal-open-source-coscreen-screenhero-finally-free-mtoq9njpy"},"datePublished":"2026-10-14T21:07:55.192Z","dateModified":"2026-10-15T02:38:45.402Z","description":"Petal is an open source pair programming tool offering low-latency, high-resolution screensharing with remote control. 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