Why doesn't Google Meet recognize my mic/camera, but other video conferences work fine?
from acetanilide@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca on 17 Feb 20:08
https://lemmy.world/post/25711216

edit: I am a fool! Just needed to disable chameleon. thanks!

It was working fine a few weeks ago, then randomly stopped detecting mic/camera. Did Google get tired of me not using Chrome? Lol

I have an old HP envy 360 (internal camera and mic) Fedora 41 with KDE Plasma Firefox browser

Zoom (app), Updox (browser), and a few others still work fine. I set it to always allow camera & mic but no dice.

Old forum posts sadly did not fix it either :(

#nostupidquestions

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morrowind@lemmy.ml on 17 Feb 20:33 next collapse

Did you check to see if it has permissions

acetanilide@lemmy.world on 17 Feb 22:14 collapse

As far as I can tell it does. I looked in Firefox settings. Is there anywhere else I should look?

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 17 Feb 22:16 collapse

No that’s really the only place. Does it work with other browsers? That will tell you if ff is the culprit

acetanilide@lemmy.world on 18 Feb 01:20 collapse

Thanks. I just realized I did not try a different browser…mainly because I don’t have a different browser haha. When I get back home I will download one and (hopefully) report back.

adespoton@lemmy.ca on 17 Feb 21:32 next collapse

Is some other app already using them?

acetanilide@lemmy.world on 17 Feb 22:13 collapse

Not during the meeting, no

tal@lemmy.today on 18 Feb 00:49 next collapse

Updox

So, basically, using a different website, same browser, you get a popup window from Firefox reading “Allow <site> to use your microphone and camera?” and it lists your camera and microphone, but when you do the same on Zoom, you also get the popup, just without any microphone and camera in the menu?

If not, what do you actually experience on each website?

acetanilide@lemmy.world on 18 Feb 01:18 collapse

Mostly correct - the website that doesn’t work is Google Meet.

So for clarity, I edited your comment:

So, basically, using a different website, same browser, you get a popup window from Firefox reading “Allow <site> to use your microphone and camera?” and it lists your camera and microphone, but when you do the same on **Google Meet**, you also get the popup, just without any microphone and camera in the menu?

tal@lemmy.today on 18 Feb 01:24 collapse

Oh, sorry, gotcha.

Well, yeah, that I have a hard time finding a plausible explanation for, unless Firefox has per-device, per-site permissions. I assume that it only has per-site permissions.

I’d maybe run something like:

$ sudo lsof -n|grep /dev/video

…prior to going to the page that does this, to see whether any other software has the device open. I don’t know if that could produce that behavior, but that’s the only thing that I could think of at the OS level. Otherwise, gotta be something at the Firefox level.

Maybe you have multiple tabs or windows open that are using the camera, and Firefox constrains only one to concurrently use the thing?

EDIT: Maybe check, using cheese or some similar app, or another website right then that you can use the camera at that point? I mean, I can maybe imagine the camera or its driver or something having an issue, and the failure mode being for the device not to be visible at the Firefox menu level. I mean, I’ve seen, say, Bluetooth or controllers that get into a wonky state after unsuspending and for the result to be that they aren’t visible to applications. Reboot clears it up, but maybe you could have just been unlucky that the time you tried using Google Meet was the time that you had the issue?

acetanilide@lemmy.world on 19 Feb 21:35 collapse

Hi, thank you for spending so much time on this. I feel foolish because I just had to disable chameleon. But I really appreciate it as I am still learning Linux and I think it makes me forget the simple stuff.

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 18 Feb 05:43 next collapse

Try pavucontrol GUI app. I needed it to get teama audio connected. Just had to go into the input tab and drag the sliders/ select the drop down etc. Somehow that wakes things up.

acetanilide@lemmy.world on 19 Feb 21:33 collapse

Thanks, I’ll look at it. for now disabling chameleon worked

ImInPhx@lemmy.sdf.org on 18 Feb 10:29 collapse

Disable all your extensions and see if it works. I remember having a similar issue a while back due to a vpn extension being installed. Even when the vpn wasn’t in use, google meet didn’t work until I disabled the extension.

acetanilide@lemmy.world on 19 Feb 21:32 collapse

Thanks, turns out I still had chameleon enabled (as chrome, ironically) and it didn’t like that.

ImInPhx@lemmy.sdf.org on 19 Feb 22:05 collapse

Awww yeah!