Screen sharing under Wayland still is unusable because there is no way to stop it once started.

[BensonBear]

Over a year ago we were seeing titles like  "Zoom Linux App Now Supports Screensharing on  Wayland" but as far as I can tell this is not true now and has never ever been true. 

There are some other posts here which point out the problem but they seem to have gone unnoticed by any people actually working for Zoom, so I will try to post another one and hopefully it will get some attention. 

Basically, for a  long time screen sharing did not work at all, but finally Zoom made some fixes and now we can start up screen sharing.    But in my experience and that of others reported in some threads here, once  the screen sharing is started, it cannot be stopped.   This really makes screen sharing unuseable.

PLEASE FIX ZOOM SO WE CAN STOP SCREEN SHARING ONCE IT HAS STARTED.

The problem is twofold.   First, most significantly, the floating toolbar that allows one  to stop screening (as well as alter it in other ways)  DISAPPEARS after it has been shown for only about ten seconds.    It seems impossible to get it back (no matter what settings one has in the settings dialog, contrary to what some people have suggested).

Second, there is supposed to be a keybinding, Alt-S to stop screen sharing.   But it also has no effect. 

It is possible that Zoom cannot figure out how to get the floating toolbar to keep showing under Wayland (people have reported both in various versions of Gnome and also KDE this happens).  

But surely in order to make their program USABLE at least, they can  AT LEAST fix the keybinding so that it works to stop the screen sharing?  This seems like a trivial thing to do, which will move Zoom from being unusable under Wayland to very usable, even without the bells and whistles of the invisible toolbar.

Please!  Thank you. 

[benson-bear]

Two months and not a single reply to this?   Two years and Zoom still does not work for screen sharing under  Wayland.   Why is not something done about this?  It is infuriating!

[Zike]

Screen sharing is still not working at all on wayland with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

The only solution is to use Zoom through FireFox where the screensharing actually works.

How can they advertise here that it is working when it is not:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/6634039380877-Zoom-sharing-your-screen-on-Wayland-issue

[benson-bear]

Regarding their question, "How can they advertise here that it is working when it is not", I believe what they are saying in that page is that you can run Zoom and get screen sharing, including just a specific window, without launching the entire desktop system under X.   

And this is true, at least for me.   They have changed to use the Wayland APIs to do screen sharing, so that it works under Wayland.   However, in order to have this work correctly, you still have to run zoom using X via XWayland (by asking for the xcb qt plugin).   Then it steps out of XWayland in order to do the screensharing. 

But we should be able to run the entire application with all its windows running under Wayland directly.

[benson-bear]

Are you not able to run Zoom under Wayland using XWayland?

One way we use Zoom is like a phone, calling one another and getting a ring, and answering, without setting up any meetings, which I do not believe can be done with the web app.

If you do not object to using XWayland for the occasional app while running under Wayland, you should be able to get adequate peformance with screen sharing by running Zoom from the terminal with

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb zoom

It will render most windows with XWayland, but steps outside of this framework to do the screen sharing. So strange they use Wayland to get screen sharing when running under XWayland, yet cannot use it under Wayland. It is because the somehow the floating toolbar for the controls does not work correctly under Wayland. They could easily fix this, if they cannot figure out how to make a floating toolbar, by simply making a keybinding to stop sharing. Zoom would still be less than ideal in many ways, but it would contain the BASIC FUNCTIONALITY needed.

[benson-bear]

Oops. posted reply in wrong place.  And... cannot delete?

[soltysss]

using Manjaro KDE with wayland and screen sharing works in 6.0.12.5501 just fine. But after upgrade it is broken, and as of today latest version is broken. Had to downgrade to mentioned version. (flatpak)

[BensonBear]

How do you know that Zoom is not running using XWayland except for the part that actually does the screensharing (which will have to be Wayland in order to get the windows and screen of the Wayland session)?   This is what it has done since forever on GNOME. 

[soltysss]

I don't know what it's running, I just know that I was using zoom just fine in my day to day work, sharing screen for coworkers which allowed me to choose what to share screen or window and on second selection what monitor to share. Then after the update when I attempted to share screen on a call, it said sharing is not supported on my OS (even so Manjaro was listed as one that is supported in that message). I figured update broke that functionality (thay made UI redesign in that update so it was obvious Zoom was updated). Afterwards, I went on Zoom website and downloaded their latest version that was newer then the one in flatpak, there it allowed me to share screen but it didn't allow me to choose what monitor to demonstrate and if I press button to stop sharing zoom froze and became unresponsive. Then I figured that only choice I have is to downgrade to the old version.
I'm don't know the intricacies of screen sharing on linux, I never invested time to study that, always just used that app that did what I needed it to do.