During an online session, I spotted that the screen share on Ubuntu stopped working. The first thought that came to my mind was the application itself. But later I realized that no matter what app I’m using whether it’s Skype, Teams, Google Chat … the same effect affects all of them. The screen is black and on the other side, I can only see my cursor. So I found a workaround that solved the issue.
Prerequisites
- Ubuntu
- sudo privileges
Solution
Some Ubuntu kernels are coming with Wayland enabled. So the workaround is to disable Wayland and enable Xorg as a display server protocol.
Step 1. Open the gnome display manager configuration file.
sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
Step 2. Find and uncomment the #WaylandEnable=false line which will force Xorg.
# GDM configuration storage
# See /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas for a list of available options.
[daemon]
# Uncomment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg
WaylandEnable=false
Step 3. Now, restart the machine and the screen share will get back to normal.
reboot
Conclusion
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