Arch Linux

iskander

Member

Registered: 2026-06-22

Posts: 4

Telegram Desktop video call black

There is the following problem with Telegram that is shipped as the 'telegram-desktop' package. In a video call, both a video from the other party's camera and a video from the other party's screen ("Screencast" function) appear as black boxes. There are two interesting things:

1. If use Telegram that is shipped as a Flatpak package from Flathub ('org.telegram.desktop'), then the problem persists but can be fixed by installing 'xorg-xwayland' pacman package. Surprisingly, the problem persists in Telegram from pacman, after reboot also.

2. The black boxes presumably have a correct aspect ratio (if the other party shares a vertical video, I'm seeing a vertical black box).

I haven't found any fix for that online. Any ideas on how to fix Telegram from pacman? Thanks!

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,749

Re: Telegram Desktop video call black

Does it work on X11?
On wayland this will likely hinge on a functional xdg-desktop-portal implementation, see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=313883

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

iskander

Member

Registered: 2026-06-22

Posts: 4

Re: Telegram Desktop video call black

Haven't tested on X11, unfortunately. Thanks for the link, will research. Though for now I don't think that XDG Desktop Portal is dysfunctional because screen sharing works OK in other programs and (forgot to mention that in the initial post) in Telegram also, both in pacman and Flatpak versions. So I can share my screen but I won't see a shared screen/camera of the other party. Though I'm using just a single Portals backend, 'xdg-desktop-portal-wlr'.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,749

Re: Telegram Desktop video call black

Does

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb Telegram

work?

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

iskander

Member

Registered: 2026-06-22

Posts: 4

Re: Telegram Desktop video call black

The issue have just resolved by itself. Unfortunately, I don't know what was the trigger. Currently, I can see the other party's video from a screen/camera using Telegram from pacman. The only thing I did for sure is installing and then uninstalling the 'pulseaudio' pacman package (I was fixing a whole another thing, there was no sound output in any of Flatpak apps, and installing of 'pulseaudio' was the fix). The current state of my system is the following:

- no 'xorg-xwayland' pacman package installed
- no 'pulseaudio' pacman package installed
- no any Flatpak app installed
- no 'flatpak' pacman package installed
- pacman packages 'xdg-desktop-portal' and 'xdg-desktop-portal-wlr' are installed and configured for proper screen sharing

If anything, here is the result of the command proposed above:

$ QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb Telegram
qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display 
qt.qpa.plugin: From 6.5.0, xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platform plugin.
qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: minimal, xcb, vkkhrdisplay, wayland-brcm, wayland-egl, wayland, vnc, minimalegl, offscreen, linuxfb, eglfs.

Aborted                    (core dumped) QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb Telegram

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,749

Re: Telegram Desktop video call black

I did for sure is installing and then uninstalling the 'pulseaudio'

pacman -Qs 'wire|pulse'

If you're using pipewire you want to use pipewire-pulse

qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display 

The DISPLAY environment isn't set -  do you still have xwayland installed?

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

iskander

Member

Registered: 2026-06-22

Posts: 4

Re: Telegram Desktop video call black

Sorry, as everything works now, I won't delve into the past problem, nor do I want to purposefully break things just to locate the reason why it wasn't working. However, I may need to set up a similar Arch system onto another machine in a couple of weeks, so it is possible that I run into the issue once again. Thanks for your advises and attention anyway!