Troubleshooting Guide

🖤 Black screen — viewers see a black rectangle instead of video

Cause: The streaming service's DRM (content protection) is blocking screen capture at the hardware level.

1. In Chrome, go to Settings → System and toggle off "Use hardware acceleration when available".
2. Click Relaunch to restart Chrome.
3. Open the streaming tab again, start the share again — the black screen should be gone.

Alternative: switch to Microsoft Edge as the host browser. Edge handles DRM screen capture more permissively than Chrome on most Windows setups.

🌫 Blurry or low-quality picture

Cause: WebRTC is automatically reducing bitrate because the host's upload bandwidth is limited.

1. Close all other applications and browser tabs on the host machine.
2. Switch the host from Wi-Fi to a wired ethernet connection if possible.
3. Lower the quality setting in the streaming service (e.g. Standard instead of HD in Netflix) to reduce the source bitrate.
4. Ask viewers to close background apps that use bandwidth (cloud sync, game downloads).

⏸ Stream keeps freezing or buffering

Cause: Host's upload is dropping packets, or a viewer's download connection is congested.

1. Host: pause the film and close any large downloads or uploads running in the background.
2. Host: run a speed test — you need at least 5 Mbps upload for a stable stream.
3. Viewer experiencing freezes: reload the watch room page to get a fresh WebRTC connection.
4. Viewer on mobile data: switch to Wi-Fi if available.

🔇 No audio — viewers can see video but hear nothing

Cause: "Share tab audio" was not enabled when the share was started.

1. Stop the current screen share.
2. Click Share Screen again.
3. In the share dialog, select the Chrome Tab option, choose the streaming tab.
4. Check that the "Share tab audio" toggle is ON before clicking Share.
5. Test by playing 5 seconds and asking in chat.

🔊 Host can hear audio but nobody else can

Cause: The streaming tab may be muted at the browser level, or the system volume is muted.

1. Check for a speaker icon in the browser tab bar — if there's a mute indicator, click it to unmute.
2. Check your system volume is not muted (look at the taskbar speaker icon on Windows, or the menu bar on Mac).
3. Check the volume slider inside the streaming service player isn't at zero.
4. If all look fine, stop and restart the share with audio enabled.

🎵 Audio is out of sync with the video (lip sync off)

Cause: GPU hardware acceleration is causing the video decoder clock to drift from the audio decoder clock.

1. In Chrome: Settings → System → disable "Use hardware acceleration when available" → Relaunch.
2. Reload the streaming tab and restart the share.
3. If using Bluetooth headphones: try wired headphones — Bluetooth codecs add 100–300ms of audio latency that can appear as desync.

🔌 Can't connect to the room / connection keeps dropping

Cause: Firewall or restrictive network blocking WebRTC peer-to-peer connections.

1. Reload the page — this re-negotiates the WebRTC connection and often resolves transient failures.
2. If on a corporate, school or university network: these often block WebRTC ports. Try switching to a mobile data hotspot to confirm this is the cause.
3. Try a different browser — sometimes a browser's WebRTC implementation has a quirk with a specific network setup.
4. Disable any VPN you might be running — VPNs frequently interfere with peer-to-peer connections.

⏱ Some viewers are seconds behind others (group drift)

Cause: One viewer's network path to the host has higher latency, causing their stream to buffer more.

1. Pause the film.
2. Have the lagging viewer refresh their watch room tab — this resets their WebRTC connection.
3. Resume together: count down "3… 2… 1… play" in voice chat so everyone presses play at the same moment.

🍎 Safari — can't share audio / can't host

Cause: Safari does not support the Screen Capture API's audio sharing feature as of 2026.

Fix: Use Chrome or Edge as the host browser. Safari users can still join a room as viewers — only the host needs to switch browsers. Guests on Safari can watch, chat and use voice without issues.

📱 Mobile — can't share screen or no audio from mobile

Cause: iOS and Android browsers don't support system audio capture.

Fix: Mobile devices can join as viewers (they'll see and hear everything fine) but cannot host a screen share. Hosting requires a desktop or laptop running Chrome or Edge. If you must host from mobile, a laptop is the only real solution.

🦊 Firefox — no "Share tab audio" option

Cause: Firefox only supports whole-screen sharing, not per-tab audio capture.

1. When Firefox's share dialog opens, select Entire Screen rather than a specific window or tab.
2. Firefox on Windows automatically includes system audio when sharing the whole screen — no separate checkbox needed.
3. Be aware that sharing the whole screen means viewers see your desktop and any notifications. Enable Do Not Disturb before sharing.