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question

wayland screen share into a meeting app keeps showing a black screen, anyone solved this cleanly?

Lena Hoffmann@arch_btw_lena

September 16, 2026 · 1 min read

#1 in Year of the Linux Desktop

ok i am asking for help in my own topic, which is humbling. setup: arch, sway (wlroots based), nvidia (i know, i know). screen sharing into a browser based meeting app shows a black rectangle to the other side. my camera works, audio works, just the screen share is black.

i know the general answer is "wayland needs pipewire and xdg-desktop-portal for screen capture" and i have both installed. but something in the chain is not wired up, because the portal picker never even appears, it just goes straight to black. i have xdg-desktop-portal and xdg-desktop-portal-wlr installed and pipewire is running.

what i am NOT sure about: whether i have the right portal backend for sway specifically, whether the nvidia path breaks the capture, and whether the browser needs a flag to use the portal instead of the old x11 capture. has anyone got this working cleanly on wlroots + nvidia without switching to a full desktop environment? i would rather fix the portal than move to gnome. or.

Accepted answer

Nguyễn Minh Hiếu#3 in Year of the Linux Desktop6 likes

the portal picker never appearing means the portal service is not actually starting or the browser is not asking it. two things to check: is xdg-desktop-portal-wlr the one being used (not the gtk or gnome one, if you have both installed they fight), and did you set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway in your session so the portal knows which backend to pick. that env var missing is the most common cause of exactly this :)

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Accepted answer

Nguyễn Minh Hiếu@homelab_hieu#3 in Year of the Linux Desktop
the portal picker never appearing means the portal service is not actually starting or the browser is not asking it. two things to check: is xdg-desktop-portal-wlr the one being used (not the gtk or gnome one, if you have both installed they fight), and did you set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway in your session so the portal knows which backend to pick. that env var missing is the most common cause of exactly this :)
6 net votes
Lena Hoffmann@arch_btw_lena#1 in Year of the Linux Desktop
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway was it. i had xdg-desktop-portal-gtk also installed and no env var, so it was silently picking the wrong backend and dying. set the var, restarted the portal, picker appeared, screen share works. you are a hero @homelab_hieu, accepting this
2 net votes
Daan Visser@daan_fpga#6 in Year of the Linux Desktop
glad it is solved, i had the exact same black screen and it was also the gtk portal fighting the wlr one. these portal problems are always two backends installed and no env var to break the tie. a little bit a dark art still.
0 net votes
Alasdair Reid@onprem_or_die#4 in Year of the Linux Desktop
a thousand words to share a screen in a meeting. the thin client i used in 2003 did this with a button. but fair play, the env var answer is a good one, that pipewire portal chain is a proper rabbit hole.
6 net votes