Microphone Will Not Work in Teams for Linux Ubuntu 20.04

Nathan McKaskle 1 Reputation point
2021-02-16T13:58:49.663+00:00

I've seen this posted in numerous locations with no resolution. The microphone can be detected in Teams for Ubuntu but it doesn't work. Symptoms include:

  1. Testing the microphone using the test functionality works, it acts as if the microphone is functional.
  2. When actually using the microphone in a meeting, everyone can hear my background noise when I'm not speaking, the moment I speak my microphone cuts out.
  3. All three microphones I've tested work perfectly in every single other app including Zoom, Slack, Google meet, Discord and even Preply. The microphones are perfectly functional outside of Teams.
  4. When you see any one of the chosen mics in settings there's an indicator bar that is supposed to show how much sound it's detecting, this shows nothing when you're in a meeting with anyone. It's like it doesn't hear a thing. This is despite the symptoms in #2.
  5. The Microsoft Teams web client won't even load in Chrome so I can't even try that, despite adding the domain to the trusted list.

To open the web app, {{aTagStart}}change your browser settings{{aTagEnd}} to allow third-party cookies or {{aTagStart}}allow certain trusted domains{{aTagEnd}}.

I need to use Linux for my work, but everybody wants to use Teams. So I end up having to join meetings on my iPhone because that's the only place it works. This makes it impossible to share screens and other features. I've seen this same identical issue reported numerous times with no good responses for resolution. Please help.

My 3 microphones that are not working with this are a Sannheiser Game One gaming USB headset, an Audio Technica AT2020 USB, and the mic built into my Logitech 1080p webcam. The webcam works fine of course but the built in Mic is unusable except in other apps, as I said in #3.

Skype for Business Linux
Skype for Business Linux
Skype for Business: A Microsoft communications service that provides communications capabilities across presence, instant messaging, audio/video calling, and an online meeting experience that includes audio, video, and web conferencing.Linux: A family of open-source Unix-like operating systems.
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  1. JimmyYang-MSFT 48,541 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-02-17T05:40:38.537+00:00

    Hi @Nathan McKaskle

    Do you mean you can hear white noise when using microphone in Teams on Linux?

    Does anyone else have the same issue in your organization?

    Have you tried to use another browser to login Teams web client?

    In this case, we recommend you try to clean your Teams client cache file and restart your client to see if it can be fixed. Running the following 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.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
  2. Nathan McKaskle 1 Reputation point
    2021-02-17T14:40:57.46+00:00

    I managed to get it working in the browser finally, Chrome. Cleared cache and re-allowed all cookies temporarily, logged in, set it back to block 3rd party. There should be no reason they need to allow 3rd party cookies for this to run, sounds like a bad design problem. There is still the problem with the client though but maybe one day they'll fix it.