Camera and Microphone Won't Load In Google Meet (or Zoom)

Description of the issue:

Microphone and camera access for a Google Meet session with Brave is not working. The only way to joint the session is without microphone and camera. The issue is limited to Brave functioning on Google Meet.

How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Join a Google Meet with Brave Browser (with or without Shields activated)
  2. Attempt to allow camera and microphone access
  3. Access will fail and the only way to get into the meeting is to click “Continue without microphone and camera”
  4. See “Additional Information” section for specific issue and troubleshooting information

Expected result:

Capability to join a Google Meet session with camera and microphone access.

Brave Version( check About Brave):

Brave 1.79.119 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Chromium: 137.0.7151.68

Additional Information:

When joining a Google Meet session, I can click on the “Use Microphone and Camera” prompt. Then I get the “meet.google.com is asking you to Use your microphones, Use your cameras prompt”. Clicking on either “Allow while visiting site” or “Allow this time” fails as that prompt just ‘blinks’ and refreshes.

Clicking either option again results in the same ‘prompt refresh’ regardless of how many times you click it. Disabling Brave shields, restarting the browser and computer also does not help. Therefore no access to the camera and the microphone is available through Brave.

Clicking “Continue without microphone and camera” allows the user into the meeting but, again, the use can not use their camera or talk through the microphone.

Clicking the same Google meet link on other browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) works - camera and microphone are allowed/accessible. This appears to be limited to Brave.

Additionally, the camera and microphone can be accessed by other meeting platforms (MS Teams, Brave Talk) so this is an issue with Brave and Google Meet.

Addendum: Sharing my screen will still work. This issue is also not OS specific (occurs on both Windows 11 and Linux OS).

Addendum 2: Problem persists in the new Brave version: Brave 1.79.123 (Official Build) (64-bit). Any fix suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated (or confirmation that a bug fix is being sought by devs).
I have also tried using the “Guest” profile in Brave to see if it happened to be some add-on/setting conflict the I still encounter the same problem in the Guest profile.

Addendum 3: Just discovered the exact same issue in Zoom: Clicking on either “Allow while visiting site” or “Allow this time” fails as that prompt just ‘blinks’ and refreshes. See my lower comment for a demo of the behavior: Camera and Microphone Won't Load In Google Meet (or Zoom) - #8 by xtend

If this is an issue no one else is experiencing and limited to my install (rather than being a known but), please let me know so I can at least know that. Thanks!

@xtend I believe that there is some strangeness with Google Meet specifically where you also need to set the Autoplay permission to Allow.

Visit meet.google.com, click the “tune” icon next to the URL, then Site settings and set the Autoplay permission to Allow (you may want to go ahead and ensure that the Camera and Microphone permissions are also allowed while you’re here).

This should allow you to use Meet as intended.

1 Like

@Mattches That worked. I did have to set the Camera and Mic to “Allow” for the fix to work. Thanks.

Any ETA for when this might be permanently fixed?
I would eventually like to reset the Site settings back to default (I prefer the “Ask” default when joining a meeting so I have a ‘warning’ first).

I believe this is just a consequence of how permissions work for the site. I don’t believe there will be a “fix” for the Autoplay permission specifically. You should be able to set the mic/camera permissions back to Ask.

Actually, the Autoplay was already set to “Allow (Default)”. It was setting the Camera and Mic to “Allow” (rather than “Ask”) that solved the problem. Resetting them to Ask results in the issue coming back again.

Thanks for the information. When you set it to Ask does the browser or site not prompt you to allow the permission?

The Ask setting does prompt me but clicking “Allow this time” just ‘refreshes/reloads’ the prompt (I click it and the prompt blinks off then right back on again). I also describe the behavior in my initial post (just below the screenshot), if that helps: If you look at the screenshot, you can see the prompt to allow but clicking either option doesn’t work. It used to work fine in the past.

I hoped this is something related to this being a paid/commercial Google account but testing on a ‘free’ account with Brave resulted in the same issue.

Edit: @Mattches this should help:

@Mattches Just noticed this and I think it is related. If I am not logged into my Google account and try to join a meeting in Brave, Google prevents it completely. In contrast, in Firefox, I get the prompt to enter my name to join (and the meeting admin will decide to let me in) which is what should happen:

Brave:

Firefox: