Free browser-based bilateral stimulation tools exist, they work, and for most Canadian therapists doing occasional virtual EMDR they are the correct answer. You open one in a tab, share your screen, and run the set.

The catch is not the tool. It is that the visual has to reach your client by screen share, and screen sharing is not something every video platform gives you. On some plans it is a paid feature. If yours is one of them, a free stimulation tool does not help, because there is no way to get the target onto the client's screen.

So check that first, before you spend an evening comparing tools.

Check your video platform first

Open your video platform and confirm you can share a browser tab, on the plan you are actually paying for.

This trips people up because screen sharing feels like a basic feature. On Doxy.me it sits with the paid tier rather than the free one, alongside group calls and the customisable waiting room. Other platforms include it throughout. Your records system's built-in video may or may not.

If you cannot share a screen, your options are to pay for the tier that allows it, move to a platform that includes it, or run auditory or tactile stimulation instead — which are legitimate choices in their own right, not consolation prizes.

What the free tools give you

The well-known browser tools give you a moving target with adjustable speed, size and colour, usually a sound option, and nothing to install on either side. That is genuinely the whole requirement for a visual set.

They do not give you anything clinical. No scores, no phase structure, no record of what happened, nothing that lands in your notes. You are running the protocol; the tool is drawing a dot.

That division is fine, and it is worth being clear-eyed that it is what you are choosing. Most practitioners are already recording SUDS and VOC by hand.

The settings that are not optional

Rate. Keep it slow. Around two cycles a second is the usual working range for eye movement, and faster is not better — it is harder to track and it raises the risk below.

Screening, before anything moves on screen. A moving visual is the one modality carrying photosensitive-seizure risk. Screen for photosensitive epilepsy, and use sound or touch instead where there is any doubt. Recent concussion and migraine with visual aura are the other common reasons to skip the visual.

You start it and you stop it. Nothing should advance on its own. A tool that auto-advances or runs a fixed set length has taken a clinical decision away from you, and the whole point of the between-sets pause is that you choose when it happens.

The problem nobody warns you about

When you share your screen, the shared content usually takes over the window and the video tiles shrink or disappear.

You have just lost the client's face during the part of the session where you most need to be watching it. Dual attention is the mechanism, and abreaction shows on a face well before it shows in words. Practitioners describe ending up watching a dot they are already controlling while the person they are treating is a thumbnail or gone.

There is no clean fix on most platforms. A second monitor helps, so the client's video stays large on one screen while the tool runs on the other. Ask the client to stay in speaker view rather than switching to full-screen share. Neither is reliable across devices, and the client's device is the one you cannot see.

Test it with a colleague, not with a client

Run one full set with someone who can tell you what it looked like on their end.

Ask three things: could you still see my face, was the movement smooth or stuttering, and did the pointer or the browser chrome show up in the shared view. Stuttering is common on a shared screen over a weak connection, and a stuttering target is worse than no target — it breaks the tracking rather than just looking untidy.

Do this before a real session. Discovering it during phase four is not a recoverable moment.

When a free tool stops being enough

When the layout problem above is costing you the client's face every set. When you want the scores to land in the record rather than on a sticky note. When managing two windows during an abreaction is more than you want to be doing.

At that point you are looking at stimulation built into the video rather than beside it. That is a real difference in kind, not just in polish — but it is worth paying for only if the free route has actually failed you.

Until then: free tool, screen share, slow rate, screened client, your hand on the start and stop. That covers most virtual EMDR done in Canada.

About Rivet

Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.

One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.

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