9

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Login to Google Meet and set the audio output to AirPods or System Default (which is AirPods)

Have tried using compatibility mode. Not a problem on safari

Expected behavior:
I expect to be able to hear the other person but cannot.
If I switch the output to inbuilt speakers or an external wired speakers, I am able to hear. I have not tried with other bluetooth audio devices, so I am unsure if this is specific to airpods or all bluetooth audio devices.

Orion, OS version; hardware type:
Version 0.99.122-beta (WebKit 615.1.11.7)
macOS Big Sur 11.7.3 (20G1116)

    5 months later
    21 days later
    4 months later

    I can attest to this as well, though for me the audio is receive-only, i.e. I can hear, but nobody can hear me. One thing I notice that is different between Chrome and Orion is how Orion displays the audio devices in Meet, see below for what I mean. What's especially odd is that Orion shows my AirPods correctly for the mic, but only shows "System Default Speaker" for the speaker (which is my AirPods in this case), but the mic is the device that doesn't work. In any case, hopefully that provides some helpful details. I'm more than happy to do some specific troubleshooting if you have specific things you'd like me to try!

    Vivaldi (basically Chrome)


    Orion


      I can confirm that in my setup audio is coming from Google Meet to the AirPods, but input from AirPods is not. But if I select another microphone (built in mic in my Dell Monitor) it works. The same behaviour does not happen in Safari, i'm kind of puzzled.

        2 months later

        Issues with Google Meet in Safari and Orion are probably the only reason for me not to delete Arc browser from my Mac 😅

        I can confirm that in Orion the issue with AirPods is still relevant for me, i.e. people cannot hear me, and I hear people. Safari has its hiccups with Google Meet too, but it had never behaved like that. If it recognizes AirPods, it is able to use it both for input and output.

          a month later

          Just tried this on the latest RC (0.99.126.4.1.7-rc) and it seems to be working fine.

          It was a bit artificial test because I've been calling myself (between MacBook and iPhone), but both the audio, the video and screen sharing seemed to work fine.

          Will try to use Orion during some of my team calls this week, let's see how that plays out, and whether I would be able to finally delete Arc from my computer 🙂

          Today I had a Google Meet call with my team and experienced no issues, neither with the audio nor with the video or screen sharing.

          Deleting Arc in a couple of days and switching to Orion for Google Meet if this persists 🎸🤘🏻

          I am using Version 0.99.126.4.1.7-rc (WebKit 619.1.1) and the issue persists. @asktru can you confirm if you are using AirPods for both audio input and output? I think the issue may only happen through Bluetooth or some particular device enumeration for AirPodds.

            pantulis yes, I was using AirPods Pro and both I heard people and they heard me, without any issues. This was just one meeting though, need to test more.

                asktru Interestingly, the issue does not present in my home computer. Audio through Airpods Pro, as you said, works in Google Meet (and Microsoft Teams in compatibility mode, yay!)

                Will need to check back at my work computer when I arrive tomorrow at the office.

                    6 months later

                    Just following up on this. Frustratingly, Google Meet works when I restart the browser, but stops working as soon as my AirPods go to sleep, i.e. putting my headphones back on and joining another meeting, everything looks like it should be working, but nobody can hear me, though I can hear them. The only fix is restarting the browser.

                    This is super annoying during the workday - I end up having to restart the browser multiple times, basically for each meeting (unless they happen to be stacked one after the other), and that causes me to have to reauthenticate to a bunch of things I use throughout the day.

                    I have to assume this affects other bluetooth headphones that go into some kind of standby/sleep mode, but don't have a set to test with and try to replicate. My theory is that Orion must associate some kind of identifier with the headphones when they first connect/are used, but that identifier rotates/changes if the headphones go to sleep and then reconnect, but Orion tries to use the stale identifier to obtain the underlying audio stream, or something along those lines - I don't know how device management of this kind works in macOS/Orion, but I think the core intuition that this has something to with the fact that the issue occurs when the AirPods sleep is probably accurate.

                    I can reliably reproduce this, so I'm happy to test with any amount of debug logging/whatever, just ping me here or shoot me an email, and I'll gladly do whatever it takes to fix this!

                      Vlad I'm not affected by that other issue, I was mostly looking at it to see what other related issues might be connected to this one. This issue is the one that I experience multiple times a day.

                      I saw in the other issue you said you think this is localized to my setup, but frankly I don't see what I could possibly be doing that is unique to my installation. I'm working with the latest stable releases of macOS, firmware for my AirPods Max, and Orion (and it occurs in both the stable and RC releases), I do use my browser heavily, so typically have two windows, each in different profiles, with up to 200 tabs in each at their high water mark. Most of those tabs are suspended though, and as I mentioned above, restarting the browser only temporarily alleviates the issue if I hop on a call right away - after a call is over, and my AirPods have been unused for a bit, the issue crops up again the next time I try to hop on a Meet. Aside from my Orion usage, I have a bog standard machine. If this issue is localized to me, I suspect it is due to something with my Orion installation specifically, i.e. some kind of state got corrupted during an upgrade, or something along those lines - I can try to excise every bit of Orion state on my system and try a fresh install, again, to see if I can still reproduce, but other than that I'm out of ideas. I do have another MBP that I haven't tried to repro with, so I can try that as well, but I'm looking for information on how I can actually diagnose the issue on my machine.

                      As mentioned upthread, no other browser exhibits this problem, which makes it that much harder to understand what might be going on. I'm a compiler engineer, so I'm plenty familiar with debugging tricky software issues deep in my toolchain, but it isn't clear to me where to start with the browser stack, its not something I've played around with before. As an aside, something that would be very useful even for relatively untechnical users, would be if there was a way to dump Orion's view of the devices on the system that it enumerates for things like the settings dialog in Google Meet, in the debug info output, but perhaps that isn't straightforward to add.

                      I'm assuming you need to debug the browser itself on a regular basis, so what's your approach to diagnosing these types of issues? I'll gladly spend the time looking into it, and do what I can to contribute my efforts to solving this, or at least confirming that it is specific to my machine. But some guidance on what tools are most effective for the task would be helpful. I'd hope that isn't too much to ask, from one software engineer to another.

                          bitwalker On top of that, the browser simply doesn't load Google Meet reliably with compatibility mode.

                              Fortrikka Interesting, I'll have to test that out and see if I can reproduce that as well. Personally, I don't use compatibility mode with Meet, but I do disable Intelligent Tracking Prevention and Content Blockers for meet.google.com, specifically to avoid any issues those features might introduce. My understanding is that there isn't much of a leap between that and compatibility mode, so that might make it easier to narrow down a root cause.

                                  7 months later

                                  I was hoping to switch full time to Orion, but I'm also having this issue with Google Meet where it's just showing "System default speaker device" rather than my list of speakers (when connected to my monitor and there are multiple inputs available. Sadly though, I'm also able to repro in Safari, so this may be a WebKit or just Google Meet issue. Also found a thread where others had mentioned that issue in Safari https://support.google.com/meet/thread/161763635?hl=en&msgid=162098747

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