[Linux only] Black screen

If you are having a black screen when using Drovio on Linux, here is how to fix it.

What to do if there is a black screen when the session's Host is sharing the screen?

If only the guests are getting a black screen

• You are probably trying to share a high resolution screen (>= 4K) and your machine can't handle it. We generally detects that and fall back to voice chat with a notification. There are some cases however where we can't prevent it.

If both, the session's host and the guests are getting a black screen

• This means that the host's desktop environment does not support transparency. Since our application is using on-screen overlays, a compositor is necessary in order to render transparency and prevent the black screen.
• To solve the issue the host needs to install and run the compositor manually, for example, if the host is using i3 (window manager), they will need to apt install picom and run picom&.
• The 3 main free compositors are: Compton, Picom and Xcompmgr.

Updated on: 14/08/2026