Microsoft Teams and Wayland - will screen sharing be fixed in 21.04?

Question

I've googled until my fingers bled, but unfortunately all I end up finding is either posts by Microsoft saying "Teams works on Linux" and posts in help forums that just end up telling people to use xorg instead of Wayland.

But Wayland is going default, and screen sharing isn't working atm (Ubuntu 20.10 here, using the "official" Teams package) unless we use xorg. Using Wayland doesn't even show the option to share one's screen in Teams.

Has there been any news concerning 21.04 and screen sharing?

Alternative: is there anything I can do in 20.10 using Wayland to get screen sharing to work in Teams?

I'm sure there's a lot of us that have the same question, now that working from home has become the new norm...

Solution 1

I hate to say it, but the answer ended up being installing Manjaro instead of Ubuntu… Teams (on Wayland) just worked out of the box, with screen sharing and everything.

Solution 2

The problem does not lie with Ubuntu nor Linux.

Teams is an app built on the electron framework, so basically it is one package consisting of html5 with javascript running on chromium. This makes it possible to use it on any platform that can run chromium.

Problem is, wayland support for chromium is incomplete and buggy. Therefore on wayland it is forced to use xwayland. This further reduces the possibilities of things like screensharing.

In short, for now use Xorg if you have to make full use of electron based apps like Teams.

Wayland will eventually work as soon as chromium has full support of it and all electron apps have been upgraded to use that version of chromium.

Solution 3

As an alternative option, you can run the Teams web app on Chrome or Edge Beta, which allow sharing on Wayland.

Solution 4

The only way I could get Wayland and Teams working with screen sharing was to install the beta version of Edge:

https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download?platform=linux-deb

Login to teams and install it as a desktop app.

Not the best solution but gives the appearance of a desktop app with the ability to share my screen plus I didn't have to modify any chrome settings.

I am currently running:

Distributor ID: Pop, Description: Pop!_OS 21.04, Release: 21.04, Codename: hirsute

Based on

Ubuntu 21.04

Kernel 5.11.0-7620-generic

Solution 5

I'm on 21.04 with Wayland, and screen sharing works well in the latest version of Google Chrome (v92.0.4515.159).

Here's a trick if you want to have Teams in a separate window and with a desktop shortcut:

• Navigate to https://teams.microsoft.com/ in Chrome.
• Open the Chrome menu (top right).
  • More tools.
    • Create shortcut...
      • Rename to what you want
      • Check Open as window
      • Click Create
• Right click on the new shortcut on your desktop and select Allow Launching
• Now you'll have a high resolution icon on your desktop which opens Teams using an up to date Chrome (with screen sharing working) in a separate window.

View more solutions

Comments

[tigerjack]

Up to now, the problem is on the MS Teams side (long story short, they use an old version of electron). If you want this feature, you can upvote this feature request microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestion‌​s/…

[Enno Gröper]

I don't know, where the other feature request has gone. But this seems to be currently the must upvoted feature request regarding that issue: feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/…

[Arehandoro]

Although this is the best answer, compared to the comments, it's slightly wrong: The issue is both with MS and Electron. As it can be seen in the github repo github.com/electron/electron/issues/23063 MS had not build Teams with the flag needed for screen sharing on electron, which by the way the version used by MS is now unsupported, but also Electron only implemented the feature by default in their latest v12 release, so I would expect several issues still.

[Pascal]

Yes the issue is MS, the Teams web app in chromium works perfectly with wayland and screen sharing.

[Bastian Venthur]

Not sure why this was downvoted, but the answer is correct as of 2021-10.

[Bruno de Oliveira]

The topic is about enabling screen share on Wayland and not "A WAY" of enabling screen share. This just disable wayland,

[Henning]

cannot confirm here with UBuntu 20.10 - when trying to share screen, I get the option to chose the entire screen, but it's only black. Or two apps - Chrome or PyCharm, despite I have multiple other windows.

[runlevel0]

Most practical answer! THX. I was going to test XWayland, but using Chrome is an excellent option, specially when the rest of your working environment (except shells) are browser-based.

[xhudik]

unfortunately, it doesnt screenshare on Ubuntu 21.10 and Chrome 96.0.46. @Aleksey Rubtsov - what was your setup? (ubuntu, and chrome versions)

[xhudik]

@Pascal what version of Chromium works for you?

[xhudik]

likely I found the problem: in chrome run: chrome://flags/#enable-webrtc-pipewire-capturer and set enable (kudos: techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/… )

[Pascal]

I am on Arch Linux and since August every version, currently Chromium 96.0.4664.110 Arch Linux, but you need the xdg-desktop-portal running wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#WebRTC_screen_sharing

[bluppfisk]

screensharing using Teams on Chrome only works for certain applications (notably, Chrome itself and Codium) but not the whole screen.

[Krisztián Szegi]

I would downvote it (not enough rep.) because: as @BrunodeOliveira said it is NOT answering the question and "A less drastic solution would be to disable Wayland and use xOrg." is highly opinionated. For me it is the most drastic way, as I need to separately scale my laptop and my external monitor.

[Admin]

Tried MS Teams web on Ubuntu 22.04 - WORKS.