Zoom Meetings

Zoom Meetings (commonly shortened to Zoom) is a proprietary, cross-platform, cloud-based video conferencing platform.

Installation

Preferably, install zoom^AUR, since the files from the website will not allow self-updating.

Alternatively, zoom is also available as a flatpak: when choosing this option, replace ~/.config/zoomus.conf in the #Tips and tricks section by ~/.var/app/us.zoom.Zoom/config/zoomus.conf.

Tips and tricks

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: Show how to harden zoom with bubblewrap. (Discuss in Talk:Zoom Meetings)

Note: The xf86-video-intel driver (now considered deprecated) can cause screen share flicker on Intel's integrated GPUs. See Intel graphics for the deprecation info.

Virtual backgrounds

Zoom saves the default virtual backgrounds to ~/.zoom/data/VirtualBkgnd_Default and the custom virtual backgrounds to ~/.zoom/data/VirtualBkgnd_Custom.

Logs

Zoom saves the logs to /home/user/.zoom/logs/zoom_stdout_stderr.log.

Use system theme

Note: This can lead to a lot of bugs.

Edit ~/.config/zoomus.conf and change the value of useSystemTheme to true, then restart zoom.

Disable Zoom mini window

Zoom's "Mini Window" feature allows to minimize the Zoom video, but keep it on top as an overlay. To disable it:

Edit ~/.config/zoomus.conf and change the value of enableMiniWindow to false, then restart zoom.

Screen share

Wayland

To share your screen on Wayland, install the required packages for WebRTC screen sharing, edit ~/.config/zoomus.conf and change the value of enableWaylandShare to true, then restart zoom. As of November 2022, it may be necessary to additionally set the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=gnome environment variable before launching Zoom to allow Wayland screen sharing even on non-Gnome desktop environments, because Zoom still seems to perform a legacy check for this variable before offering Wayland native screen sharing.

Xorg

To enable screen share on Xorg, you must change the session type to X11 (i.e. set the XDG_SESSION_TYPE=X11 environment variable). Depending on how you start your graphical session, this value might not be set by default.