No Audio in Brave Talk

New Feature Feedback Brave Talk
1

Over the past few months, I have had issues getting Brave Talk to transmit audio, either from microphone or computer audio. I checked GitHub, and none of the open issues tagged to Brave Talk are similar to this. While other forum posts here, including this ( No audio in Brave ) one, seem to have the same or similar issues, they’ve been automatically closed due to inactivity.

Here are other things that might be worth knowing:

This has been happening on various versions, including the current one, v1.68.134.

I am using Windows 10, version 22H2.

WebRTC is using its default settings in the browser settings.

Messages and video are unaffected, and can still be used without issue in Brave Talk.

Other people I have attempted to chat with over Brave Talk have joined with Opera GX and Firefox. While I cannot confirm the OSes other people have used, I’m pretty sure the Firefox user was using Windows 11. Up until recently, the Opera GX user was the only one I chatted on Brave Talk with.

Brave Talk is picking up audio from my microphone. I also made sure that the output device was my computer speakers.

The browser is able to play audio from other sources, so this is localized to Brave Talk only.

I have not hosted premium or Web3 calls.

Similar issues have noted that extensions may interfere with this. None of the extensions I have installed seem to bother with Brave Talk, but if I need to disable or otherwise uninstall them, I can try that. Shields also doesn’t see anything worth blocking, so it can’t be responsible.

I have noticed in the past that the AdGuard Windows app might be interfering with the ability to share audio, even when told to not do anything with the Brave Talk website and to leave WebRTC alone. While I temporarily turned it off when doing anything over Brave Talk, I also left it on a couple of times and it worked in spite of that. I might test this in the not-too-distant future to see if the utter lack of audio is still caused by AdGuard. If it is, just what is it seeing as trouble?

If there are other things that I should share here, such as specifically which extensions I have installed, settings in Brave, etc., that would be good to know. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to see if others are having the same or similar issue to see how widespread it is. Furthermore, if I need to make a GitHub account and open an issue there, I can do so.

2

@MystMrX, just to confirm, did you check the output device settings in Brave Talk or your OS settings?

Also, are you saying things work perfectly fine if AdGuard is turned off? I want to understand if it can be replicated and guaranteed to work with AdGuard off or if it was intermittent.

Instead of listing extensions and settings, try these basic troubleshooting steps:

  1. Open in a private window: This starts a new session with no stored cookies and all extensions disabled.
  2. Test in a new browser profile: This starts a new profile with most of Brave’s settings at default and no extensions installed.

If it works in private window with no issues, then it affirms cookies or extension, though most likely an extension.

If doesn’t work in private but works in new profile, could be settings but weirdly enough still ends up being extensions in most occasions.

In either case, if it works no issues on either, it helps narrow down things significantly.

3

I checked the output settings in Brave Talk. While I was trying to troubleshoot on my own, I did verify OS settings. Furthermore, when I suspected the primary issue was AdGuard, Brave Talk was working fine with it off.

I have been using Discord in place of Brave Talk with the Opera GX user due to these issues. When we chat next (which should be this Friday if all goes as planned), I’ll see if I can perform these tests, including seeing if AdGuard is still interfering, to see where the issue lies. If it ends up being an extension thing, I’m curious which extension is being troublesome.

1 Like
4

Sounds good. Do me a favor, @MystMrX. When you report the results, please tag me by typing @saoiray. I happened to notice your reply, but it didn’t alert me. Tagging me will ensure I don’t miss anything, especially if you need more help.

5

@saoiray Will do. I’ll report back with my findings once I learn more.

1 Like
6

@saoiray While the Opera GX user was not able to join me, I was able to find someone else to help me. In any case, here are my findings:

Audio was able to go through both ways in a private window, both with and without AdGuard running in the background. This indicates that one of my extensions is unintentionally messing with Brave Talk. The next step now is figuring out which extension is causing issues. Compared to when Brave Talk was the go-to for chatting with the Opera GX user, I now have Snowflake, Predirect, Indie Wiki Buddy, Proton Pass, and LocalCDN.

I should mention that Brave Talk has been able to run with extensions. Most notably, Privacy Badger has not been interfering.

With all that out of the way, have any of the extensions I listed historically had issues with Brave Talk? If all else fails, I can just run Brave Talk in private windows and temporarily stop Snowflake from running in the background while doing so.

1 Like
7

None that I can recall. In fact, never heard of Predirect, Wiki Buddie, or Indie. And when I just did searches for all of them, it seems you’re the only one to ever list it here on Community.

LocalCDN seems to have broken things before, but not Brave Talk. You can see an example of this at Brave breaking websites CSS or something, seems to happen to websites randomly - #12 by DeathUman but that was in 2022. I can’t say I’ve seen any reported issues as of late.

8

@saoiray The extension’s full name is Indie Wiki Buddy. It effectively acts to redirect Fandom, Fextralife, and Neoseeker links to the BreezeWiki frontend (which essentially renders those pages without any of their 99+ trackers that Brave Shields keeps pulverizing), but if an indie version of a wiki exists, it targets that instead. Predirect, meanwhile, acts similarly, redirecting links to troublesome sites to frontends (such as YouTube to Invidious/Piped, for example). The equivalent extension for Firefox is LibRedirect, though a Firefox version of Predirect exists.

Now that you’ve indicated LocalCDN as historically causing issues with some sites, I can focus any future troubleshooting on it and see if it’s the source of my initial issue. Regardless, I would consider this case closed.

1 Like