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Indie Maker
Indie Maker

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I got tired of "can you see my screen?" so I built a shared reading room for documents

Every document review I've ever been part of goes like this: someone shares their screen, the PDF is too small to read, they scroll while you're still on page two, and half the meeting is "can you see my screen? …how about now?"

I kept thinking: why are we all staring at one person's screen, when the document itself could be the shared space?

So I built SyncPage (https://syncpage.app). The idea is simple: every document gets its own room. You upload a PDF, a deck, a spreadsheet — everyone opens the same document in their own browser, and you can see each other's cursors and annotations live. The presenter can pull everyone to the page they're on, or people can wander off and read independently, then snap back with one click. Voice is built in, so you don't need a separate call running alongside.

A few things I was deliberate about:

1. Guests don't need an account. You send a link, they click, they're in the room. Every signup wall I removed increased the odds someone would actually show up to the review.

2. It handles real office documents, not just PDFs. Word, PowerPoint, Excel — the stuff people actually review — with annotations that stick to the document.

3. Presenter sync and independent reading. Most tools pick one: either everyone's locked to the presenter's screen, or everyone's on their own and nobody knows which page you're talking about. We do both — follow the presenter, or break away and rejoin whenever you want.

It's a small bootstrapped team (five of us) and very much a work in progress. Web, Windows, and Android are out; macOS and iOS are next.

If you do document reviews with a team — or if you've ever sat through the "can you see my screen" dance — I'd love to hear how you handle it, and what you'd want from a tool like this.

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