Escaping the Sandbox: Fixing the Zoom Camera on Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04

There is nothing quite like the mild panic of joining a meeting only to be greeted by a void where your face should be. On the latest Ubuntu 26.04 and the 24.04 LTS (Wayland), this has become a recurring theme for anyone unfortunate enough to rely on the Zoom Snap package.

You check your settings. The camera is detected. It works perfectly in Firefox. It works in Cheese. You’ve even checked the Snap permissions and everything looks “correct”. Yet, Zoom remains a stubborn black screen.

The Root of the Problem

The issue lies in the Snap sandbox (confinement). While Snaps are marketed as a “convenient” way to package software, their restrictive environment often fails to play nice with modern display servers like Wayland. In this case, the Zoom Snap fails to properly negotiate video streams through XDG Desktop Portals or the PipeWire/WirePlumber interfaces.

A quick look at the kernel logs usually reveals the culprit:

Failed to resubmit video URB

Essentially, the Snap process is trying to talk to the hardware, but the sandbox is standing in the way, resulting in a communication failure despite the “permissions” being granted. It is another example of “security” features that simply prevent the user from using their own gear.

The Fix: Ditch the Snap

The most reliable pathway to a working camera is to stop fighting the Snap sandbox and move to the native Debian package. This version has the necessary system permissions to handle video rendering and hardware acceleration on Wayland without jumping through hoops.

Step 1: Remove the Snap version

First, get rid of the broken Snap:

snap remove zoom-client

Step 2: Install the Native .deb Package

Download and install the official package directly from Zoom. This ensures you are bypassing the confinement issues:

wget -O /tmp/zoom_amd64.deb https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_amd64.deb
sudo apt install /tmp/zoom_amd64.deb

Step 3: X11 Compatibility (If needed)

If you are still seeing a black screen in the native app, you might need to force it to use the X11 compatibility layer (XWayland). Some older hardware still struggles with native Wayland rendering:

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb zoom

Hardware Quirks: ASUS and Sonix Webcams

If you are using an ASUS HD webcam (Sonix Technology Co., Ltd.), you might be hitting a specific bandwidth issue. In these cases, resetting the kernel module with a specific quirk can often get things moving:

sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo
sudo modprobe uvcvideo quirks=0x80

The 0x80 quirk is a known workaround for Sonix-based webcams that fail to negotiate bandwidth correctly under Linux.

Summary

The Zoom Snap package is currently a liability for anyone on Ubuntu 24.04 or 26.04 Wayland. Until the packaging is fixed to properly support modern video interfaces, the official .deb installation remains the only sane choice for full hardware compatibility.

Stop wrestling with the sandbox and just use the tools that work.

• Ubuntu
• Zoom
• Wayland
• Snap
• Troubleshooting