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 make sure the value enableWaylandShare is set to true, if not, 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.

There are reports that even with all the dependencies in place Zoom will still not use pipewire for screen capture. In this situation manually configuring Zoom to use Pipewire has been reported to work. This can be done as follows:

Start the desktop client and go to Settings->Share Screen
Click Advanced
Change the Screen capture mode to Pipewire (as opposed to Automatic)

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.

Joining meetings in the browser

If you want to avoid the Zoom binary entirely, a reasonable alternative is the Zoom web client. While the web client is not fully on par with all the features offered by the client binary, it offers a smooth and stable experience, and does raise fewer security concerns than installing a proprietary binary.

If the original meeting URL is https://<subdomain>.zoom.us/j/meeting_id?pwd=password, the web client can be accessed via the URL https://<subdomain>.zoom.us/wc/join/meeting_id?pwd=password.

"Redirector" browser extension

In Firefox, Chromium, and Opera, it is possible to use the Redirector extension to rewrite the URL automatically. Create a rule as follows:

Description: Zoom web client
Example URL: https://sub.zoom.us/j/123456?pwd=pass
Include pattern: *//*.zoom.us/j/*
Redirect to: $1//$2.zoom.us/wc/join/$3
Pattern type: Wildcard