Discord now properly supports screensharing on linux

When do they stop selling user data? Next patch?

Just use spacebar instead
- Spacebar doesn't even do voice calls does it? Let alone screen share
- Nice! Thank you
they say they dont sell any user data, although i have my doubts about that
- It doesn't really matter if they do or don't. What matters is that they can change their TOS at any time, they keep an archive of all historical data, and you will have pretty much no recourse no matter what they decide to do with it in the future.
  
  Who knows what will happen to Discord in five or ten years?
  
  They might get bought by a narcissistic billionaire.
  
  They might sell all their data to Google for training AI.
  
  They might go bankrupt and sell off their assets to the highest bidder.
  
  They might have an IPO and begin the usual value extraction at the expense of their users.
  
  I know, I know...crazy ideas, right? When has anything like that ever happened?!
- They also recently implemented E2EE for calls.
- A bear doesn't tell you it shits in the woods.

I was almost convinced they were keeping this broken on purpose, it's been broken so long. Like, years long.

It was broken so long I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if news surfaced that Discord was taking back-handers from Microsoft under the table to keep it broken. With steam working so well on Linux now, broken discord streaming without actual working audio share was one of the last things that posed a hurdle for gamers ditching Windows.

(In the meantime, thank you Vesktop for your service <3)

I saw something from a discord dev (can't find it, so grain of salt) about how there was interest recently to do it, but they'd have to work on other stuff that affected everyone first, and they'd probably get it done by q4 2024, guess they were right.

I think before then the whole linux graphics and audio space hadn't really stabilized enough for them to be interested.
It was broken so long I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if news surfaced that Discord was taking back-handers from Microsoft under the table to keep it broken.

Tech companies are fully capable of being lazy for free. Fixing this takes dev time from other work that brings Discord money so doing this costs them, especially considering that Linux userbase must be rather tiny. 99% of software companies don't give a shit about making quality product and will always try their hardest to do as little work as possible while making as much money as possible. If fixing a bug will cost them more than potential profits from making it work then they won't fix it.
- You're right of course, it's definitely down to simple lack of incentive, rather than some kind of conspiracy. But the conspiracy was a fun shower thought! :)
convinced they were keeping this broken on purpose, it's been broken so long. Like, years long.

Heh. There's a ticket with Splunk. It's a simple request: do the 30 sec of work to let us install your software rpm from a proper yum repo.

They can't figure out how.

They won't ask.

It's 12 years old now.

The ticket for them to do a trivial exercise with tools twice as old, is now a tween. It can ride the bus on its own. I think it can get a Facebook account. Maybe.

We should get one for it.
- It was the same with Zoom but AFAIK they're finally working on it now.
- Is there really? Long time splunk admin, I would love to see this
You give them too much credit. It's just shitty, that's it.

Discord is pretty much broken on all platform. It always was. There's just no real alternative unfortunately.
- "Don't attribute to malice what is explained by incompetence"
- Lets create an alternative.
I like how Vesktop updates in the background. Discord proper has to close, download the .deb, install, and relaunch.

Oh awesome, I’ve been using the webcord version as the others were all shit for screen sharing. Having said that even webcord also has weird sound issue sim hoping are fixed with this.

Fuck Discord! 🙂

Sadly there's no alternative.
- Zulip has been around for a loooong time. It integrates well with Jitsi, and is fully self-hostable.
- Revolt looks pretty good despite its lack of a large user base
- matrix, xmpp
Why?
- Centralized social media. Poison of the masses. If they control the pullpit, they control the congregation. Tale as old as time.
- The founder's shady history with OpenFeint, their entire privacy policy and shit like this, take your pick. Wikipedia also has an entire section dedicated to Discord's controversies. No matter how you look at it, Discord has a great many shortcomings.
- https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord
  
  https://stallman.org/discord.html

I've been screen sharing from discord on hyprland for months, it wasn't already working?

Last I checked I could only share specific windows, not the whole screen. Later there was also an update with a window or screen selection dialogue that didn't work at all, I think. After that I stopped using it on wayland.
- I regularly share my whole screen
  
  I have an issue with the dialog box popping up multiple times but that's it, still works
  
  The only caveat is window specific sharing often doesn't work because of how Wayland works

And yes, vesktop did it first, but discord's version is quite a bit more polished

Vesktop still allows you to choose a single audio output, Discord's implementation seems to share system audio of all running apps, and doesn't let you choose the specific application.
- As far as I'm aware, Vesktop also allows you to share at 60fps, not just at 720, but up to 1440 at no charge. Can't wait for Vesktop to continue being ahead of the curve
Finally I can go back to having people at 200% 😍

Took them long enough

But still doesn't accept my legitimate phone number, which is mandatory now.

Only in servers that enabled that verification. Its a server setting
- Sent by me:
  
  Dear Discord Privacy Team!
  
  I'm writing to you to inform you that your platform (mobile, desktop, browser) can enforce the user to verify their account with a phone number, after the user has changed their E-Mail adress. This is a serios privacy problem! I'd like you to verify that you don't intend on providing other (more privacy friendly) means of account verification apart from providing the phone number. I suddenly cannot use my Discord account due to this and I object to providing a phone number.
  
  Kind regards, ~sntx
  
  Their answer:
  
  Discord Privacy Team (Discord Support)
  
  Hi there,
  
  Thanks for reaching out to us. Unfortunately, we aren't able to assist you here. This channel is reserved for privacy questions and requests.
  
  It looks like this is a question for our Customer Support team. We recommend that you resubmit your request and choose the appropriate reporting option. You can do so here: [...].
  
  In the meantime you can check out our Help Center for more info on everything Discord.
  
  We appreciate your understanding.
  
  Sincerely, Discord Privacy Team
- It isn't just a server thing. Discord can request a phone number from you if they think something unusual is happening. Trying to create an account while using tor will make them ask for a phone number, and they reject those numbers offered by shared number services.

That's about time.. I won't be uninstalling vesktop tho

Oh my fuck, finally. Good lord Discord, only took you eons to get that working with Wayland after you broke it.

I get that there's other things like Discord out there, but nothing works like Discord.

Matrix doesn't?
I get that there’s other things like Discord out there, but nothing works like Discord.

There's plenty of free alternatives that works much better than discord

https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
- Not if I want calling, video chat, screen sharing and role based chat rooms all in the same place. I've explored this, but it just isn't feature complete enough at the moment. I'd definitely describe myself as a Discord power user and Matrix just doesn't manage it.
- Matrix does not have the features of Discord. It's far closer to a Telegram alternative. It doesn't even have voice channels, a very basic requirement for a Discord alternative.

This is past due, I use Vencord.

About fucking time

I like their UX, the button doesn't say "Share screen" but "Make Selection". On Element my dad every time has such a hard time to share the screen because even though he did it already a hundred times, he presses the share screen button and then waits, without choosing which window or screen to share.

you first click the "share screen" button, then it asks if you want to share a device, screen or window, then it shows you that screen, that summons a permission prompt tailored to what you selected recently.

I agree it's quite nice

Just installed Canary on my system to test this, and while it's a little janky and the hardware acceleration seems to stop other apps using the GPU at the same time this is still good enough I think I can finally move to Linux as my main OS. I assume this will get polished further in the future. Great stuff though.

There is another, semi official linux client called vesktop. Comes with a range of plugin options, all improving or enabling functions the default client doesnt offer or hides behind a paywall. It also has had screen share on Linux for the longest time,if you do the switch give it a go. Certainly better than the default app
- Except push to talk doesn't work in Vesktop/Vencord sadly.
- they also offer vencord, that patched the official client to offer those features
- I'll.check.it out, thanks for the recommendation!
THIS prevented you from switching?

Afaik screenshare always worked when using Discord in a browser
- Pretty much! Never saw anything that said the browser client worked on Linux, but last time I tried the discord browser client it was pretty rubbish as well.

now fix push to talk which is arguable far more important

How would they implement this? I'm curious to know.
- https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.GlobalShortcuts.html
  
  KDE has support for it, Gnome is in progress: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome/-/issues/47

Vencord has had it forever. Just a community discord flathub.

Third party discord clients keep letting me down, not updating their electron version and breaking my system updates cause it's marked insecure

Browser version with extensions is the way to go
- Would you clue me in on what kind of extensions you use and why they're better that the discord app?
Yeah, I've been using Vesktop/Vencord all this time. Has more features than Discord with Nitro. No reason to really switch back to the official client.
For some reason my screen share freezes for others on vesktop.

thank FUCK

Too late for those Nimrods.
Just use vencord or something that worked for ages.

Does that works for Wayland or X? or both?
Quite nice feature indeed.

both, i mentioned that in the body text
- You didn't mention it works for both, just Wayland. Good to know it works on X, as well.
- You didn't really mention it works for both, just wayland, but it is in the article.

What about audio sharing?

also works, although it says audio "may not work in certain instances"
- Awesome!
Audio sharing works, but appears to not allow selection of a specific audio stream, when I tested it just then it appears to share system audio. Vesktop still allows you to choose a specific stream. Still, this is a huge improvement over not working at all, and the "Entire Desktop" (3 screens) works, as well as "select region" sharing!
- If you're using Pipewire, have you checked if you can re-route the audio sink using qpwgraph?
- For me audio sharing doesnt work at all haha
Yes.

Oh my god, it's happening!

Finally, Tho i dont use the desktop app anymore. (Hint electron)

Finally! =D

Did they also finally fix the AFK detection on Wayland?

I'm not sure if this is actually possible - as far as I know, applications can't track key presses/mouse movement when their associated window isn't in focus. It'd be great if they just gave the option to disable the AFK detection since it doesn't work...
- Works fine with a plugin, so clearly it can't be that hard.
- What happens now in afk detection? I never noticed it.

Oh sweet jesus, it's finally happening! Huzzah! Rejoice!

Finally. I had it working after a bunch of workarounds recently, but it was not really stable.

Always remember, this is what we all deserve for using closed source apps.

Yay I can finally uninstall Vesktop

I am using Vesktop, too. Why do you want to get rid of it?
- It's not an official client, and non-official clients are against the ToS.
  
  Discord's been nice about them so far, but at some point someone in or above that company is going to demand they start making a profit, and when that happens the amnesty custom clients are currently unofficially receiving will disappear.
  
  Hopefully I can convince people to use Mumble with me 😂

i don't use it because my laptop is a toshiba from 2006 i think and it runs xubuntu which is pretty cool!! but discord runs a little bit slow so sadly no screensharing and anyway for most of my friends i use email to talk to them

you might be interested in matrix, it's like discord, but you have the option of using a super lightwheight client
- i used to have matrix in the past but people were insulting me and well i had to leave matrix sadly but i may go back to it in the meantime i prefer email i'm sorry!!
Do you really talk to your friends through email?
- Voice recordings as email attachments, easy-peasy.

Finally

Great! Now I just need global shortcuts.

The bigger Discord becomes, the more irrelevant it is to me.

Their company is going downhill ethically and uphill financially, I kind of wish the alternatives were as good a service but thats going to take time.

At least now Signal has that new thing working for starting a video call by link, which is kinda nice. So maybe it can finally replace some use cases in certain situations.
- I was thinking more like if Element on Matrix had a prompt where users agree to the rules before entering the server, being assigned a role.

Remove this ad

Woooo yeah baby I love Discord

how dare you express a liking for a proprietary platform on lemmy, smh

/s
- Forbidden opinion detected. Deploying downvote swarm

Sorry but I don't really care about discord news on Linux...

Right on! People should only share news articles that pertain to my interests.
- Discord is related to linux as much as the facebook app is.
- I reply here :
Ah yes, the old "I care so little that I had to tell you".
I do
- I encourage you to switch to better interests
  
  https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord