Is there a fix coming for how Teams handles audio in Linux?

Andrew 56

Every 3rd or 4th time that I use Teams, my audio settings end up totally screwed up. The most annoying one is that the list of available output devices drops the listing for the aux output, and sound is piped out the aux jack and the internal speakers at the same time. I can follow the steps in the following troubleshooting article to reset everything and get the options back to configure things how I would like them, however I have to use the steps in #1B which requires a full reboot. That is insanely annoying when you have multiple tmux sessions and countless tabs open. Aside from this problem I usually go a month or more without needing to restart my machine.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProcedure

I reset everything and rebooted last night. After a single Teams meeting today, the ability to change my microphone amplifier setting is already lost. At least it isn't outputting on both devices yet and the current mic setting is OK.

I am currently stuck at 16.04 for a little while longer due to dependencies surrounding software that I use at work.

I am on a Dell Precision 7510 with the following chipset if the hardware is related. I am not currently using any external USB attached microphones or webcams:
Audio device: Intel Corporation 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family HD Audio Controller (rev 31)

Insanely annoying.

Lutosław 16 Reputation points

2021-04-26T08:46:34.763+00:00

In my case I loose audio in meetings. Reboot works but it's a serious productivity blow if I need restart all IDEs and I missed two daily meetings because of that. No problems with google meetings, YouTube, slack or whatever.

Dell laptop, audio internal speakers, mic & camera external Logitech BRIO.
Desktop client. Web client has various other problems.
KoBokh 6 Reputation points

2021-04-29T16:06:26.12+00:00

The same things
cj0nes 1 Reputation point

2021-06-05T21:17:20.773+00:00

From what I've encountered, "Teams audio" headaches are all related to PulseAudio. See my (Craig_Jones) comment here for a potential fix. Hopefully this is helpful for anyone coming across this post.
Robert Hancock 46 Reputation points

2021-06-06T22:47:39.273+00:00

There are clearly issues specific to Teams that are not found in any other application and aren't caused by PulseAudio. Problems also persist in distributions which are now using Pipewire instead of PulseAudio as the sound server. If Teams would simply leave the default audio device selection alone and stop mucking with things, it would fix this issue entirely. I have no idea what kind of code MS has written to try to be "helpful" here.
AK 16 Reputation points

2021-06-18T05:41:39.947+00:00
I know this feeling all too well - it's my Teams pet peeve.

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS. The suggestion (#1B) to reboot a Linux laptop to fix audio issues is plain ludicrous! Any one suggesting you reboot a Linux machine to resolve an issue that doesn't involve a new kernel or a new version of glibc is just plain wrong - READ ALL ABOUT IT.

I normally follow instructions #1A with a few modifications:

killall pulseaudio ; pulseaudio -k ; rm -rf ~/.config/pulse/*

Now make sure that nothing is using audio - in other words, make sure nothing is outputting sound. Now run the following commands:

sudo modprobe -r snd_hda_intel # unload snd_hda_intel kernel module sudo modprobe snd_hda_intel # reload snd_hda_intel kernel module

Now relaunch pulseaudio:

pulseaudio -D # -D to daemonize the process

This normally gets it working again for me.
Lutosław 16 Reputation points

2021-06-22T09:34:24.607+00:00

I think that people say to reboot because casual users aren't sysadmins and don't want to learn how to restart services etc.. My experience is exactly opposite - my Windows 10 laptop runs for weeks, going to stand by back and forth (the only reason I shut it down is to save power and don't heat the room), whereas I need to reboot Ubuntu 20 every few days because it just crashes or hangs during normal operation.

Anyway, my workaround for audio problems in Teams is to uncheck "On Close, keep Teams running" in the settings. My audio breaks when Ubuntu recovers from a sleep mode. So, in the morning I close and reopen Teams which "fixes" the issue. It is possible to exit Teams without unchecking that option, but then Teams requires me to login again which is tedious because it doesn't remember a password.

12 answers

Robert Hancock 46 Reputation points

2021-02-23T16:25:38.327+00:00

Teams definitely needs a way to make it STOP trying to select the input and output devices it is using and just always use the system defaults, because the way it manages audio device selection is completely broken. It doesn't notice Bluetooth devices that are connected after the app is started, and if you do manage to select a Bluetooth headset, it ends up using it for both input and output, even if you don't want this and explicitly selected another input device. It's ridiculous, no other app behaves in this way. I'm basically forced to use Teams through Chrome instead to avoid this problem.
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8 people found this answer helpful.
David Valdivieso 1 Reputation point

2021-04-15T21:47:17.82+00:00

Same issue here. After a Team call... the sound brokes.... all my applications start to sound like an old radio. As soon as I kill the Teams app the rest of applications sound good again.

Ubunut 20.04
Linux 5.4.0-70-generic #78-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 19 13:29:52 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

pulseaudio 13.99.1
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simon coleman 36 Reputation points

2021-04-16T15:50:16.087+00:00

Ubuntu 20.04,latest kernel & updates
Teams 1.4.7556

A Teams restart is required virtually every call/meeting received or sent.
On restart it is always working.
This is a terrible defect for an A/V communication product.

I never have this problem with Zoom (on the same machine). And no, I do not run the two simultaneously as a rule (and the behaviour is no different post-reboot and whether or not I have signed into zoom or not - it is not auto-started)
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nico.deranter 6 Reputation points

2021-04-08T07:39:03.85+00:00

Same here with Ubuntu 20.04 and Teams 1.4.00.7556. Even after changing the audio device settings within Teams it still force audio in and out to my bluetooth device when I start a meeting. This is the only Linux app I've ever used that behaves like this.
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Markus 6 Reputation points

2021-05-04T11:45:52.157+00:00

Hi!

1+ on this.
Host: Linux ThinkPad-T15-Gen-1 5.9.0-050900-generic #202010112230 SMP x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Ubtuntu 20.04

Teams:
teams/stable,now 1.4.00.7556 amd64 [installed]

Also tried:
t1-teams/focal,focal 4.17 all
teams-insiders/stable 1.4.00.7556 amd64

All has baiscally the same issue.
When I connect/disconnect/reconnect a sound device (speaker and/or microphone) teams does not understand what happens and needs to be restarted to be able to work with the current devices.
Linux picks up the current state without any issues, and so does other applications, both local and in web browser.
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JimmyYang-MSFT 58,646 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2020-12-09T08:04:09.21+00:00
Hi @Andrew ,

Thanks for your feedback!

To clarify this issue, I have some questions need you to answer:

Does anyone else have the same issue in your organization?

To exclude the hardware issue, have you tried to use another applications to see if the audio is normal in it?

If it is normal in another applications, I believe this issue is more related to Teams client version. In this case, we recommend you try to clean your client cache file and restart it to see if this issue can be fixed. You can run the command:

rm -r〜/ .config / Microsoft / Microsoft \ Teams

If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.
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Andrew 56 Reputation points

2020-12-09T15:15:18.437+00:00

@JimmyYang-MSFT

Yes, other people have had issues. Many choose to use the web browser only version. However, you miss things that can be important in meetings like being able to see where the presenters cursor is.

Audio works fine on other applications until Teams breaks it. Then it is broken for everything else.

A separate issue that I have with Teams is that it also fails to work with our organizations login page (Okta). To fix that, I have to go delete the two Temas cache directories and restart Teams. Also annoying...but at least I don't have to reboot my computer.

JimmyYang-MSFT 58,646 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2020-12-15T09:24:24.5+00:00

Hi @Andrew ,

Thanks for your information!

What is the version of Teams for Linux? According to your description, it seems this issue related to client version. In this case, we recommend you try to uninstall it and reinstall it manually by running the following command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/ms-teams stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teams.list'

sudo apt update
sudo apt install teams

JimmyYang-MSFT 58,646 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2020-12-18T10:14:34.297+00:00

Hi @Andrew ,

Is there any progress on this issue?
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Is there a fix coming for how Teams handles audio in Linux?

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