Zoom Rooms app "Exit" button no longer working

[toddnach]

Hi there.

I've been having an issue with Zoom Rooms that has me exceptionally frustrated:

Our educational organisation has 3 Zoom Rooms set up in separate classrooms, all powered by M1 MacMinis.  I have the Zoom Rooms app installed on each of the Mac Minis and the Zoom Room Controller on the iPads in each room.  Our setup has worked wonderfully for the past few years with no major problems. I keep both the Zoom Rooms app on the Mac Minis and the Zoom Rooms Controller on the iPads in each room updated with the latest versions of the software.  We have large Samsung monitors on the wall of each room.

At the end of the day, after classes in each room have finished, we have been clicking the "Exit" button on the lower left hand corner of the Zoom Rooms App on the Mac Minis to exit the Zoom Rooms app and return to the Mac desktop. 

Since upgrading to the new MacOS Sonoma v 14 (i currently have v 14.1 installed) the "Exit" button in the lower left corner no longer works and I can no longer access the Mac Desktop at all. The only way to "Sleep" the mac mini is to press the on-off button on the MacMini itself, which brings up the Mac dialogue box where I can select either "shut down," "sleep" or "restart".  I select sleep, which puts the MacMini to sleep. And when I start the machines again the next morning, the Mac, when woken from sleep, only takes me back to the Zoom Rooms Controller, where the Exit button no longer works!  IT's an endless loop and I can no longer gain access to the Mac OS desktop for updating software or doing anything else on the Mac.  

Zoom Rooms has essentially locked me out of being able to access the Mac desktop at all, since the Exit button in the Zoom Rooms app stopped working.

Does anyone have a fix for this issue??

Please help!!

todd

[toddnach]

Can anyone help me with this issue?  It seems like a bug introduced in one of the recent updates to the Zoom Room client software. HELP!

[toddnach · Accepted solution]

I worked with Zoom Support to fix this issue. Apparently, there is a bug (or at least an incompatibility) with macOS 14.0 that renders the Zoom Rooms "Exit" buttons in the lower left corner of the interface unusable. They stoped working altogether and there is no obvious way to regain access to the macOS desktop.  In these instances, use the Command + H (Hide) command to gain access to the macOS desktop, and work quickly before the Zoom Rooms interface automatically kicks in again. This happened to me repeatedly every 5-10 seconds. After multiple Command + H attempts I managed to gain access to System Settings quickly enough to begin a Software Update.  The fix is to update macOS from 14.0 to at least 14.1 (in my case 14.1.2) which fix the issue of being unable to gain access to the macOS desktop.  All good again!  🙂