--- 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 22 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-14). **TL;DR:** Former CoScreen and Screenhero users are enthusiastic that a free, open-source replacement exists, with many sharing nostalgia for the original tools and excitement to try it; the lone criticism targets the marketing copy, not the product itself. **Sentiment:** 78% positive · 17% mixed · 5% skeptical **The case for** - Fills a gap left by CoScreen's shutdown and other sunset tools like JetBrains Code With Me. - Native per-window sharing (vs. grid-tile sharing in tools like Tuple) is specifically what some teams were missing. - Several former CoScreen/Screenhero users say they built internal replacements and are glad to have an official one again. - Founders of adjacent/competing products (Screenhero, CoScreen) showed up supportively and offered collaboration. **The pushback** - One commenter had a strong negative reaction to AI-generated-sounding marketing copy in the landing page. - A couple of people lament it arrives years after the space's heyday. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Former users of CoScreen, Screenhero, and Tuple express strong enthusiasm and nostalgia, with only minor pushback on marketing copy. **Open questions** - How well-tuned is Petal's low-latency video/audio performance compared to CoScreen, especially for gaming or real-time use cases? - When will Linux support be fully available? **Highlights** > 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 · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094088) > 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) > 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) > Will give it a try! How is LiveKit working for you in terms of achieving low input2video latency? Did it lend itself to getting tuned for this application? > — [yokto on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50095268) > Better late than never! Given CoScreen's very recent demise, we felt this space deserved some love still. Hopefully you try it out some time, and provide feedback. > — [thedracle on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50093618) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50092470) · 87 points · 22 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [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 · 2 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":"2026-10-14T23:08:36.101Z","description":"Petal is an open source pair programming tool offering low-latency, high-resolution screensharing with remote control. 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