Linux cannot resize the participant screen or show more than 4 participants during sharing | Community
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Explorer
January 24, 2023
Question

Linux cannot resize the participant screen or show more than 4 participants during sharing

  • January 24, 2023
  • 7 replies
  • 114 views

Linux cannot resize the participant screen or show more than 4 participants during sharing.  

When sharing my screen or window the participant screen (video of participant) is a fixed size and cannot show more than 4 participants at one time.  When I am not sharing I have full control over the participant window and the contents are not limited to four participants. 

As reference:

  • I use a single monitor. 
  • I run Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS 
  • Zoom 5.12.6 (173) 
  • Large screen monitor 3440 x 1440 
  • Dell Latitude 5591 

Any suggestions? 

    7 replies

    Explorer
    March 18, 2023

    Could you resolve the issue?

     

    Newcomer
    July 31, 2023

    I am also having this issue. Any fix planned?

    Newcomer
    March 8, 2024

    any updates ?

    meeting participants are very small and I can't resize the window (make them bigger)

    Newcomer
    November 1, 2024

    Same here. Super frustrating.

     

    robmOz
    Participant
    Participant
    November 1, 2024

    Interesting. I have had a related problem with Zoom on Windows. The GUI is pretty inflexible when resizing the participants window. When screen sharing this is especially noticeable as it limits the amount of screen you're able to share if you want to have the participants window and the screen you are sharing on the same monitor. 

     

    Have you submitted feedback to Zoom?

     

    Unfortunately I was unable to submit feedback as you have to your paid user to do it. 😐

    Newcomer
    November 2, 2024

    The issue you describe is not the same. On Windows, it is possible to resize the participants' window while screen sharing, which is not possible at all under Linux. Hence, you can only see a maximum of 4 participants (which you can't even choose). This make interactions impossibles, or at best, much more complicated.

    Newcomer
    September 28, 2026

    Adding a data point, since this is still unresolved. Zoom Client 7.2.0 (AUR package) on Arch Linux with i3 (native X11). I saw identical behavior earlier on Pop!_OS (GNOME), so it isn't specific to one desktop or window manager.

    On macOS, my students' video thumbnails line up horizontally along the top of the screen during a share. On Linux they only ever stack vertically in a small default-size panel (about 208x270), and I can't find any setting to change that.

    I tried resizing the panel with my window manager to see if Zoom would re-flow the layout. The window itself has no size restrictions (it declares no min/max size hints), and the WM resized it to 900x150 without complaint. In "Show small active speaker video" view, Zoom stretched the single video to fill the new shape instead of re-laying it out. In "Show thumbnail video" view, the panel reverted to its default size and vertical stack. Zoom also creates a brand-new window each time I switch between these two views, so a resize doesn't persist even if it worked.

    So this doesn't look fixable from the user or window-manager side. The client controls the layout and doesn't re-flow it. I teach over Zoom and need to see every student's thumbnail while sharing, so a horizontal thumbnail strip, or a panel that re-flows to fit its size like the Windows and macOS clients, would help a lot.