Screen Sharing Control Bar Keeps Disappearing on KDE Wayland | Community
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Newcomer
August 28, 2022
Question

Screen Sharing Control Bar Keeps Disappearing on KDE Wayland

  • August 28, 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 49 views

Hi,

 

I am using the 5.11.9 (4300) build from AUR on Arch Linux with Wayland KDE plasma. The screen sharing works OK, and the screen recording works OK too. But the main issue right now is the disappearance of sharing control.

For any window W that coexists with the sharing control bar, closing W will make the sharing control disappear.

Here are some combinations that can reproduce the issue.

1. click on the "more" as shown in the attached picture, and click open and then close the chat/record on the computer/reactions/...
2. close the main zoom window (the one that shows the new meeting/schedule/...)

4 replies

Newcomer
May 23, 2023

Hello, i have the same issue here. Zoom installed through Flatpak on Fedora 38. This is quite relevant with Fedora discussing dropping X11 support entirely and going Wayland-only.


The issue is not about anything being disabled in the profile or not, when screensharing starts the ondisplay bar with the controls appears and does work but is not stable. After some usage it may disappear on its own or like szzonly describes always disappears after you press the chat button. Or if you press any other button which spawns a context menu. Then when you click to close the context menu the bar disappears.

When this happens the control window and the main window disappear and there is nothing that can be done but to kill the zoom process or exit from system tray icon.


Also, in the main zoom window, clicking "Return to meeting" does nothing so it is impossible to bring back the main window during screensharing.

 

Zoom Version: 5.14.7 (2928)
Operating System: Fedora Linux 38
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.106.0
Qt Version: 5.15.9
Kernel Version: 6.2.15-300.fc38.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 3000

Newcomer
June 28, 2023

I reported this problem over a year ago (for Gnome under Fedora 36) and still it does not work, rendering Zoom useless in Wayland if one needs to do screen sharing, and most people do, I wager.

 

Why is no one else talking about this, only a few people?

 

The screen sharing control bar disappears always within six seconds of the screen starting to be shared.

 

After that, there is no way to stop sharing.  

 

The shortcut keys do not work either.   Actually it would be preferable if the bar disappeared by default because it covers up other things one wants to see.   If the shortcut key Alt-S worked to stop sharing at least the thing would be usable.    Did you try your shortcut key?   If it works for you, you at least have something, but probably it does not work for you.

 

Why can't this be fixed after more than a year?   Zoom under Wayland is useless if one needs to share a screen, and who doesn't?

 

Newcomer
June 18, 2023

I am also experiencing this same issue.

 

Linux Client Version is 5.14.10 (3738)
QSG_RENDER_LOOP is
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP = KDE; GDMSESSION = ; XDG_SESSION_TYPE = wayland

 

 

Newcomer
June 30, 2023

Same here, on Fedora 38 with Wayland, it's impossible to use Zoom if you share a screen. Better not to use it or start a session with x11. Frankly I don't understand why zoom on Linux is so poorly maintain. 

I wish we had an alternative to zoom so I don't have to use at all.  

Newcomer
June 30, 2023

Do you find it works with XWayland?   I find if I start Zoom with XWayland, it works and actually catches the entire Wayland screen with no real difficulties (although that seems weird).   This is not really acceptable since it should work in Wayland but at least it is usable for the time being this way if it works for you.

Newcomer
July 4, 2023

Irob, I also want Wayland only, and I have that except for zoom and a few minor things I know can be solved.   But I am curious, if you could answer, why you move away from linux entirely instead of using X11 at least for now? 

 

Regarding the black screen, I got this occasionally.   I think it is a leftover old attempt of an earlier Zoom to do a screen share using incorrect (probably X related) means.   I had in the app settings for sharing set it to share the screen automatically, to try to avoid the long series of clicks needed to share screen (should be able to be just one click, not click click click click).    If I set it back to "always ask" what to do regarding screen sharing, then it seems to work.   Try that.  Then I found I could set it back to always share entire screen and it worked again.  

 

The key difference seems to be that when you share screen, if it is doing it the right way, it should still ask you which screen you wish to share (which is dumb because it should be able to tell if there is only one screen, and avoid this pointless dialog in that case).  

 

Do you get that dialog?  (And the earlier dialog about whether to share a screen or a window?  Geez, just give us one dialog, with the screens and  windows listed, not click click click click, but that is a minor issue compared to total failure!).   If you get that dialog I bet it will work after that. 

 

There are other issues such as you mention but this is the big one I would like to get clear that this is a real and major issue that they have utterly not resolved.   Possibly it just requires some new settings, or different library in one's linux setup (PEBCAC)  but even so they have not acknowledged there is even an issue here!!

 

From our point of view what we really want is: WHY DO THE VARIOUS POPUPS, MOST CRUCIALLY, THE CONTROLS, DISAPPEAR AND BECOME INACCESSIBLE???

 

Maybe these are still  some kind of window that Wayland is failing to find and display.   Maybe we can do something about it without changing the Zoom.  I don't know what.  You say you are using sway, not gnome (or can you replace mutter with sway, seems unlikely).    Perhaps in sway screensharing has additional problems.  It would be good if you could verify your problems under gnome.


I dual boot on my work laptop - so rather than spend time configuring an X11 setup which will increasingly become more redundant with the adoption of Wayland wait for Zoom to be fixed (hopefully soon) and use Arch/Wayland/Labwc/waybar on my non zoom intensive days.

 

Regarding the black screen, it is only for the entire desktop share,  other XWayland applications such as Slack and Evernote show up as individual windows to share (which does not work on Wayland given issues with reported issues xdg-desktop-portal-wlr & wlroots) - however performance seems to be noticably impacted running Zoom this way on the last call I was on (poor video and audio for the other attendees).

 

If Zoom can fix Wayland screen sharing issue (bars and popups disappearing) that would be a great 1st step - then if wlr can deliver per app screen sharing that would be the icing on the top!

 

I do not run gnome but have run zoom using the XDG_SESSION_TYPE=gnome and still does not work.

 

Newcomer
July 29, 2023
This post has been deleted.

No.  The people here are complaining that they cannot stop screen sharing, not that the "Screen Sharing function is missing".    They are complaining that once screen sharing has been starting, it cannot be altered in any way because the controls to do so disappear.   Rendering screen sharing close to useless unless you only want to do it once for the entire duration of the rest of the meeting.   Shocking there is no response to this whatsoever.  Zoom should provide at least SOME way to stop screen sharing once started.   Like fix the supposed keybinding at least so it works, even if they cannot figure out how to keep the toolbar visible.  How hard can it be?