Google meet (firefox) cannot access webcam and microphone

Ask Fedora
, , , , , ,
1

Since I last updated my Fedora 41 system Google Meet on Firefox stopped being able to access the webcam and microphone.

It says it’s blocked from using the camera, but I check the permissions icon in the address bar and there’s no reference to the camera.

In fact, it asked for permission to use the microphone only, which I allowed, but it still cannot record audio.

Permissions

image
image1313×1123 27.3 KB

I don’t have any sites blocked in my camera settings:

image
image651×295 22 KB

The camera and microphone are working fine, and I’m able to use Meet in Google Chrome without problems. Firefox was working fine as well, until I applied this update.

This happens on a blank new profile, without any extras installed.

Can anyone help?

System info:
Dell XPS 13 laptop
Fedora 41
Firefox 136.0.1 (64-bit)

1 Like
2

Are you using Firefox Flatpak (installed via a graphical software manager)?

If so, better to use Firefox installed via command line, or select ‘RPM’ from the graphical installer.

sudo dnf install firefox

If this is not the problem please say which desktop environment and which Fedora 41 you are using - silverblue or regular?

3

I’m installing the dnf Firefox on the regular Fedora 41, with:

Plasma 6.3.3
KDE 6.12.0
Graphics platform: X11
Kernel: 6.13.16-200

5

This is probably RHBZ #2349026 aka Mozilla #1945597 and one solution is to turn off pipewire in Firefox by changing the media.webrtc.camera.allow-pipewire configuration value to false.

Another solution, which worked for me, was to force pipewire to use libcamera instead of v4l2 to access the camera by creating ~/.config/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/99-prefer-libcamera.conf containing:

wireplumber.profiles = {
  main = {
    monitor.v4l2 = disabled
    monitor.libcamera = optional
  }
}
2 Likes
6

Setting media.webrtc.camera.allow-pipewire to false worked for me.

Thank you!