How to Disable the Google Chrome ‘WebRTC PipeWire support’ Flag

The Linux Screen Sharing Backend

In modern web browsers, WebRTC is the technology that powers real-time video and audio communication directly within the browser, allowing you to use services like Google Meet, Zoom web, or Discord without installing native apps. For Linux users (specifically those using Wayland display servers), Google Chrome introduced a flag called “WebRTC PipeWire support.” This flag integrates Chrome’s WebRTC engine with PipeWire, a modern multimedia framework on Linux, primarily to enable smooth, secure screen sharing and window capturing during video calls.

While this integration is a massive improvement for Wayland users, it can occasionally cause severe stability issues on older systems, specific X11 setups, or heavily customized Linux desktop environments. If you are experiencing browser crashes the moment you try to share your screen in a web meeting, or if your camera feed freezes during WebRTC connections on a Linux machine, the PipeWire backend may be conflicting with your display server. In these specific troubleshooting scenarios, you may need to disable the PipeWire integration to force Chrome to fall back to older capture methods.

How to Turn Off WebRTC PipeWire Support

You can force Chrome to stop using PipeWire for WebRTC capture via the experimental flags menu.

1. Open Google Chrome (on a Linux operating system).
2. Click inside the main address bar at the top of the browser.
3. Type chrome://flags and press Enter.
4. A page titled “Experiments” will load.
5. In the search bar at the top, type WebRTC PipeWire support.
6. The specific flag will appear highlighted in yellow. Next to it is a dropdown menu.
7. Change the dropdown menu setting from “Default” or “Enabled” to Disabled.
8. Click the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen.

Upon restarting, Chrome will bypass the PipeWire framework for screen and audio capture. (Note: Disabling this on a Wayland session may completely break your ability to share your screen. Only disable this if you are actively troubleshooting WebRTC crashes).