Annotation tools not available sharing a window (not screen) on Gnome 50/Wayland 1.24

Forum|Forum|21 days ago
May 24, 2026
1 reply
173 views

When I share an application window there is normally an annotation icon in the bottom left corner of the shared screen or in the meeting controls. If I share my entire screen annotations are available. However, this is not ideal for my purposes as it takes over the participants screen and impacts their workflow during the meeting.

I have checked my account meeting settings and annotations are enabled. I checked my Zoom app settings and the “include annotation toolbar” is selected.

I’m running Zoom 7.0.5 (3034) on Fedora 44 with Gnome 50 and Wayland 1.24. Same problem with Zoom 7.0.0 (1666) and 6.7.5 (6891) so I suspect this is a Gnome 50 issue.

Best answer by levili

Hi @GBeach ,
Thanks for raising this issue.

If the current desktop session is Wayland, and the presenter is sharing an application or sharing a desktop in a non-single-monitor setup, the annotation feature will be disabled.

This is due to limitations of the Wayland APIs. For better privacy protection, Wayland does not allow us to determine which application or desktop is being shared, nor can we obtain the window size of the shared application. As a result, we cannot accurately position the annotation window.

We are also looking for alternative approaches, but currently there is no good solution.

This limitation does not apply on Xorg desktops.

L

leviliAnswer

Newcomer

Hi @GBeach ,
Thanks for raising this issue.

If the current desktop session is Wayland, and the presenter is sharing an application or sharing a desktop in a non-single-monitor setup, the annotation feature will be disabled.

This is due to limitations of the Wayland APIs. For better privacy protection, Wayland does not allow us to determine which application or desktop is being shared, nor can we obtain the window size of the shared application. As a result, we cannot accurately position the annotation window.

We are also looking for alternative approaches, but currently there is no good solution.

This limitation does not apply on Xorg desktops.

G

GBeachAuthor

Explorer

Hi @levili ,

Thanks for the explanation. I hope it doesn’t take too long to find a workable alternative since a lot of the major Linux distros have dropped or will drop Xorg.

In the meantime, I’ll discuss workflow changes with my clients to work around it.

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