Steam Voice chat - mic does not work when plugged in at the front

[mastablasta]

At one of the updates, at some point, steam voice mic stopped working, if i plugged the headphones at the front plugs.

Discord - mic works, Skype for Linux - mic works, Audacity - mic works, but Steam voice give me this (see photo). in all other cases the OS correctly turns off the speakers plugged at the back and turns on headphones plugged at the front. So Steam mic does not work, CS:GO or any other steam game - mic does not work as long as i have headphones attached in front plugs. If i move them to the back all works.

message:
Oops, looks like your browser was told to deny us microphone access!

how to fix this? is chromium snap causing this? which browser was told to deny (i am guessing the steam browser)? how? when?

most advice on internet is for windows and i tried to clear cache once. after a couple of reboots it worked, but then after another reboot it stopped with same message. i was hoping one of the updates would resolve it but it did not.

OS: Kubuntu 20.04
Headphones: HyperX (i don't think it is a hw issue anyway)


someone in one of the communities suggested to check the app permissions in system settings, but i don't see that anywhere in system settings.

[claydoh]

Steam uses an internal Chromium implementation for its browsing, store, chat etc, so that is the 'browser' in the messaging.

Have you gone into the Steam chat settings and seen if the you need to change the input device after switching the connection?
Seeing as your other application works fine with this front connection, it seems likely to be a bug in the Steam client, perhaps.

[mastablasta]

the chat settings showed only "default" at input.

this give me an idea. I turned of the PC. plugged in the headphones, turned on the speaker and stated it up.

then i went to load the discord. it showed (as before) various input/output options. i made sure i have it set to headphones (well there is no other mic right now), gave it a test. it worked same as before. so now i launched steam and immediately noticed the mic is on. a quick test shows that it works right now.

yes it is likely some bug in steam client. but i was thinking that it could have something to do with chromium which went to snap. but obviously this is not the issue.

i will do some more tests. i think the system is also not registering the headphones fast. so this could be an issue as well. it registers them eventually and immediately switches to them as preferred device, but maybe this is not done fast enough for applications to pick it up. though last time i did the test i tried it in all mentioned apps first then went to steam. and input was set to default and output correctly to headphones. strange.

EDIT: I found out that i get the "oops" message only if i have open mic selected in settings. however selecting push to talk and restarting steam gives me working mic (as long as i hold the button when i talk). i tested it in CS:GO (Linux native) and it worked there. later i will test in Deep Rock Galactic (which is using proton), but i guess it will likely work there as well. still not sure what is causing it, but it increasingly seems to be a steam bug. though i never saw any report /complaint about it on internet. snap based chromium is still very sus to me.

[claydoh]

Steam will be using an internally supplied Chromium implementation of Chromium for it's browsing stuff, completely independent of the distro. Snap, or any other Chromium installation won't have an effect on this, and as far as I know, in-game support is going to depend on that specific game and as opposed to the steam client, as proton isn't quite perfect all the time just yet

There are custom proton builds that sometimes *might* offer some extra support, maybe, if one wants to go into the weeds on that.
Looking over a game's user reports on protondb might be useful to see what proton versions work better on a game, and maybe if anyone has had similar issues with audio, and hopefully potential solutions.