Vidéos in browser not starting and headset microphone and sound blocked

[K1nggor]

Hi since an update 2 days ago I got some issues with the videos in any browser (opera, chrome and firefox for example). The videos are locked and don’t start:

Also when I go to discord or Google Meet the headset isn’t working:

I found some workarounds but changing the current desktop with ctrl+alt+F12 for example and going back to first desktop make it work. Also unpluging the headset and plug it in again seems to make it work.

The problem seems to be back a couple of minutes later. The videos I already started continues to work but the new ones bug and that’s the same with discord vocals and google meetings. So I have to apply one of the workaround every ten minutes.

But even with workarounds it’s really boring. Does anyone has an idea of what is going?

Thank you in advance.

[pebcak]

Welcome to EnOS’ community @K1nggor!

If your issue started after pipewire-media-session got replaced by wireplumber (see in /var/log/pacman.log around the date your issue started), then you could switch back to pipewire-media-session and see if you issue will be resolved.

Make sure your system is up-to-date:

sudo pacman -Syu

Then:

sudo pacman -S pipewire-media-session

Say yes when asked for removal of wireplumber.

Also see:

Videos won't play anymore, and neither does sound

I think it happened after an update, the most significant thing I can think of was something audio related being replaced, but I usually update before going to sleep and I was pretty tired so I don’t remember clearly. On firefox based browsers (I use librewolf, but I tried firefox as well) videos just won’t play. On a chrome based browser (vivaldi) youtube videos didn’t play, but other videos played, if very poorly. If I try to play videos with mpv they won’t play at all, vlc plays video, but …

[K1nggor]

It seems wireplumber indeed replaced pipewire-media-session! I removed it. and restart my computer

[K1nggor]

It worked! Thank you very much!

[pebcak]

You are welcome!
Glad you got it resolved!

Note to @moderators
Do you think it is in order to make a sticky note about this issue which seems to hit some systems?
There have been several threads/posts about the same issue which got resolved by switching back to pipewire-media-session.

[Scotty_Trees]

If you want to switch back to pipewire-media-session are there any wireplumber configs that need to be removed anywhere btw?

[pebcak]

Having a look at

pacman -Ql wireplumber

I believe it should take out everything with itself when replaced.

I am not seeing anything related to wireplumber in /etc nor under ~/.config.

Have a look here as well

https://pipewire.pages.freedesktop.org/wireplumber/configuration/locations.html

to see what to look for and where.