Sharing application window on Wayland/Linux - when will be implemented?

[Joho]

Are there plans to fix the Wayland support?

I use Fedora34+Gnome40+Wayland (which is the default for Fedora), and I use Zoom (5.8.0 from rpm install). You can only share an Entire screen and not the single application window with Zoom on Wayland. This feature is only available on the legacy X11/Xorg platform, while Wayland is the default on any major Linux nowadays (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE,...).

Do anyone knows the roadmap for fixing this?

Zoom Support writes:

"Linux sessions utilizing Wayland can only share an entire desktop or whiteboard. In order to share just a specific application, you will need to launch your Linux session with Xorg instead."

(https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362153-Sharing-your-screen-content-or-second-camera)

But this does not answer the question: when?

Thanks

[SmooreGAC]

I wondered the same. Using Fedora with X11/Nvidia to teach college courses from home. Pipewire obviously works well already.

[es-kyra]

The problem is Zoom incorrectly implemented their screensharing on modern gnu+linux distributions which use Wayland. Zoom did not introduce Wayland support until March 1, 2020 version 3.5.361976.0301. This was broken upon release because they did not use the correct API (gdbus-org.freedesktop.portal.ScreenCast) which has been available since early 2018: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/releases/tag/0.10

Many users are switching to affordable, reliable, backed-by-open-source options like https://8x8.vc, powered by Jitsi (plus, they didn't lie to their users about end-to-end encryption and get sued). At the beginning of the Wayland project, there was only a screenshot API, not an actual screenrecording one. The screenshot API exists only for the system to take screenshots (of course). It is very inefficient for video but what's worse is it is also completely insecure because in order for it to be publicly enabled, applications have full access to record your entire screen without explicit permission.

The correct API was designed for video, and gives the user control over sharing specific windows/apps or the entire screen, so no app gets to spy on your screen without your permission. So when Zoom created their  implementation they used the wrong API, and for the almost two years since then Zoom still didn't update, ignored the users with issues, did not monitor for deprecating APIs, and did not test upcoming gnu+linux distributions like Fedora to see that the API they use was incorrect, long been deprecated, and imminently disabled. This left many users and developers to do the testing and investigation for them, but still took nine months to be recognized. Finally, they are working on this now, so we will see how long the fix takes.

See: https://community.zoom.com/t5/Meetings/Wayland-screen-sharing-broken-with-GNOME-41-on-Fedora-35/m-p/...

[MatthewG]

Looks like they have finally 'fixed' it. With version 5.11.1 (3595) on Ubuntu 22.04 with a Wayland session, I appear to be able to share application windows. And without random black squares as it tried to remove zooms own windows from the view. Looks like this may have some with 5.11.0 as the release notes say 'Resolved an issue regarding sharing content on Gnome 41 with Wayland '

Not tested 'in anger' yet (ie a real meeting as opposed to a test).

The Gnome environment puts an icon on the dock showing 'screen is being shared'. Need to test if it allows 'remote control' though.

[es-kyra]

And it appears they broke it again several months ago and it's just been sitting broken ever since.