Can't open Microsoft Teams - blank screen

[sant123]

Describe the bug
Trying to open Microsoft Teams leaves a blank page.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open Microsoft Teams
2. That's it, a blank page should be shown (the error)

Expected behavior
Load normally

Screenshots

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Ubuntu 18.04.2
• Installation package deb
• Version teams-for-linux_0.4.0_amd64.deb

Additional context
Clicking on debug option I get this:

Any idea of what's going on? Thanks.

[sant123]

Also when cleaning config "~/.config/Teams for Linux" it solves the issue for a while, then you will encounter this again.

[IsmaelMartinez]

I have seen this before but if you click ctrl+R it should just do the job.

Feel free to investigate the root cause, if you can/wish. We really appreciate contributions.

[IsmaelMartinez]

Also, 0.4.0 is not out yet as deb package. Only out to snap edge at the moment. Can you confirm deb package version or if it is from snap edge/source? Thanks

[sant123]

Thanks for your answer @IsmaelMartinez. I tried Ctrl+R too but didn't work. What I did was sign out and sign in again but that only works once.

I built the deb installer with yarn dist:linux deb command and got these:

[IsmaelMartinez]

Can you explain more about Ctrl+R not working? Have you tried clicking on the “refresh” option in the tab menu?

Another option is to try —disable-gpu?

teams-for-linux --disable-gpu

The windows client seems to have the same issue. For reference:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Blank-screen-when-opening-Teams-app-on-windows-10/m-p/32356?advanced=false&collapse_discussion=true&q=Teams%20app%20white&search_type=thread

Also, are you company or personal profiles? Proxy’s can be also creating this issue.

Last but not least, can you check snap edge, revert to 0.3.0 or drop me and email and I send you a deb package. It might be an environment issue.

[g4borg]

I experienced the same bug in 0.1.17, upgraded to 0.3.0, and still have that bug.
Same javascript errors. Sometimes refresh helps, sometimes not.

As I sometimes move between office and home environment, I am going to take notes when it happens exactly.

Wow, the microsoft report is from 2016

[IsmaelMartinez]

I think is more MS issue, I sometimes need to click a couple of times Ctrl+R but it's pretty sporadic.

As a workaround, it could be possible look for for that log in the console and trigger a refresh, but that might create a infinite loop/kaos.

[wellingtoncosta]

+1

[sant123]

Can you explain more about Ctrl+R not working? Have you tried clicking on the “refresh” option in the tab menu?

Another option is to try —disable-gpu?

teams-for-linux --disable-gpu

The windows client seems to have the same issue. For reference:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Blank-screen-when-opening-Teams-app-on-windows-10/m-p/32356?advanced=false&collapse_discussion=true&q=Teams%20app%20white&search_type=thread

Also, are you company or personal profiles? Proxy’s can be also creating this issue.

Last but not least, can you check snap edge, revert to 0.3.0 or drop me and email and I send you a deb package. It might be an environment issue.

What I mean is hitting Ctrl + R refresh the page but the blank page still persists. Also tried with the "refresh" option in the tab menu and still the same.

This is what I get with the --disable-gpu option:

My profile is from a company and was working fine 2 days ago with 0.3.0 version, when issue appeared I upgraded to 0.4.0 to see what happens and see me here 😅

[IsmaelMartinez]

have you tried removing the cache?

https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux/blob/develop/KNOWN_ISSUES.md#no-history

Sometimes it does the trick.

[sant123]

Yes, but that's my workaround to make it work once. If you do a refresh, you will see the blank page again.

[IsmaelMartinez]

do you have the same issue with the workaround in 0.3.0? I know this process might be a bit painful, but will help nail down if the issue is now worse for you or is just something introduced since 0.3.0.

Funnily enough, I use to have to click Ctrl+R every morning but I don't need to do it anymore. MS might have changed something underneath, or your company network. Apologies for not been that helpful at the moment.

[sant123]

Yes I have the same issue with the same workaround. Don't worry, I saw the code last night but understood nothing 🤣 I tried to figure out the issue but seems MS Teams issue, in fact is done in Angular.js If I get an idea of what's going on I'll post it here.

[g4borg]

tried all 0.1.16, 0.1.17, 0.3.0 and deleting the .config folder each time, but at second time it always happens, even in different internet scenarios.
Relogging works as workaround, either by waiting for the timeout site of teams, or deleting the config folder. Albeit, our SSO logout does not bring you back to the login screen unfortunately, so usually I delete the config.

The main difference is now, that it always happens now for me, and it will not recover with refresh at all, on all versions.

Error: Action with name notificationsService_startup already exists

i think this angular error basicly happens only on reload, not on first login. And it does not even work after a refresh once you logged in successfully.

The Content-Security-Policy directive 'prefetch-src' is implemented behind a flag which is currently disabled

Not sure if this might be related. at least i can try out all fixes because it is always reliably does not work.

[lgringo]

Hi !
First, thanks for your work. It's very convenient to have a Linux client for Teams.

I don't know if it can help, but deleting the folder :
.config/Teams for Linux/Partitions/teams-4-linux/Service Worker

resolves the problem (@sant123 said deleting .config/Teams for Linux solves the problem, but you have to do a full login, not when you delete only Service Worker)

[g4borg]

confirmed, that does the trick for me as well.

[IsmaelMartinez]

does any of you all can run the app from source? My suspect now is the cache so it might be as easy as changing this line https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux/blob/develop/app/index.js#L74 to:

window.loadURL(config.url, { extraHeaders: 'pragma: no-cache\n' });

from https://electronjs.org/docs/api/web-contents#contentsloadurlurl-options

I do really need to do some refactoring to that index.js file...

[sant123]

I executed the app from source with that change but occurs the same thing:

[IsmaelMartinez]

Well, worth a try. I hope I start facing the issue should I can then fix it!

[EdRoxter]

Hi !
First, thanks for your work. It's very convenient to have a Linux client for Teams.

I don't know if it can help, but deleting the folder :
.config/Teams for Linux/Partitions/teams-4-linux/Service Worker

resolves the problem (@sant123 said deleting .config/Teams for Linux solves the problem, but you have to do a full login, not when you delete only Service Worker)

Can confirm, need to do this before every start of the application though. I configured a rm -rf ~/.config/Teams\ for\ Linux/Partitions/teams-4-linux/Service\ Worker/* as user login script for the time being.

[wellingtoncosta]

I deleted ~/.config/Teams for Linux/ folder and it didn't recreated after installing Teams for Linux again. Any idea?

[g4borg]

you did try to start teams as well, after installing it? the binary creates that folder.
(might be a stupid answer, and nothing to do with your problem)

[wellingtoncosta]

I uninstalled and installed multiple times and this folder was not created again.

[sant123]

@wellingtoncosta you need to open Microsoft Teams in order to re-create that folder, and yes @EdRoxter you need to delete "Service Worker" folder before opening the application.

[IsmaelMartinez]

Hi @trialism , have you tried with deb or snap packages?

[ghost]

I'm on arch, those won't work for me.

[IsmaelMartinez]

try the arch package then https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/teams-for-linux

[craigs100]

I've now downloaded the "Microsoft Teams for Linux" Preview package and it seems to be working very well.

[seboss666]

It works well, and having native call and calendar notifications is really a must that Ismael's work can't work around (it's the way web version works, inside the window). But CPU usage is still a mess, like it was under Windows and Microsoft did not answer a single word on it for years.

Hence, the preview version may embed more telemetry stuff to monitor key points of this specific build.

[IsmaelMartinez]

hi @seboss666, I did look at the asar file and it doesn't look like they have added extra telemetry. Its just the normal telemetry that they have. Is the same code as for Windows and Mac.

You can try to limit the CPU allocation, but then it goes pretty slow if you don't give it 90%, but that could depend on the processor, etc. Hope helps.

[magnusolsson80]

Hi. I'm currently suffering from this problem too in my corporate network. Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the app uses chromium in some way?

I have an issue with chromium that all sites are available except the local authentication server. I just get a error page that the server can't be found. When I try to log into other Microsoft web apps, after the first authentication, the page becomes white. I don't see this issue in Firefox.

I don't know if this is just an issue with Chromium on Ubuntu or not, but my co-worker runs Fedora and he does not see any issues.

--Update: I added our corporate certificate to chromium and now it works.
--Update 2: I found a work around that at least made it work. By appending "teams-for-linux --ignore-certificate-errors". Happy days!

[seboss666]

Hi. I'm currently suffering from this problem too in my corporate network. Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the app uses chromium in some way?

I have an issue with chromium that all sites are available except the local authentication server. I just get a error page that the server can't be found. When I try to log into other Microsoft web apps, after the first authentication, the page becomes white. I don't see this issue in Firefox.

I don't know if this is just an issue with Chromium on Ubuntu or not, but my co-worker runs Fedora and he does not see any issues.

--Update: I added our corporate certificate to chromium and now it works.
--Update 2: I found a work around that at least made it work. By appending "teams-for-linux --ignore-certificate-errors". Happy days!

Electron apps, just like this one, are, in a nutshell, webapps running with a chromium frontend and a nodejs/v8 backend. So yes, it uses Chromium, but a packaged version not dependent on you system dependencies like I think the version shipped on Ubuntu.

[IsmaelMartinez]

Hi @magnusolsson80 , your company probably uses self sign certificates.

You will see a message in the console saying something like
The unknown certificate fingerprint is:

if that is the case, you can add that certificate fingerprint to you config.json file.

You can find more info in here https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux/tree/develop/app/certificate

Thanks for putting your solution. This helps others to tackle issues and it is really appreciated.

[jonjahren]

I met this bug in 1.0 under Ubuntu 19.10, and I tried installing it through flatpak, snap and .deb, but no matter what I did I was still met with no window upon starting the program. I tried the --disable-gpu command line switch, ctrl+r or refresh from context menu, and nothing would work.

I then tried installing it on my laptop which has an Intel GPU, and it worked out of the box. Then I tried removing one of my GPUs in my desktop, since I was running a GPU passthrough system I thought that might help, but no dice. As a last ditch attempt I tried installing Plasma and when running plasma, the application starts as normal. So my problem exists only under Gnome and only using an AMD GPU.

[IsmaelMartinez]

@jonjahren, have you tried something like this? #35 (comment)

[mwtoews]

I just had a similar issue (blank on startup) with the .deb version on Ubuntu (teams 1.3.00.5153 from https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/ms-teams/), which was solved differently than any of the answers above.

My issue was that my laptop was docked and had multiple monitors running. The solution was to un-dock and use the laptop monitor, where I can finally see a log-in screen. After logging-in (and chose option to say logged in), there are no issues when re-docking with multiple monitors, including when restarting.

[IsmaelMartinez]

Hi @mwtoews,

Thanks for reporting that, but you are reporting a MS official app issue. This is NOT the official app.

I think many people are starting to confuse both... hopefully they solve their main issues soon.

[manoj-zwayam]

I quit the app and restarted, it worked for me.

[CasperOng]

I believe --no-sandbox does make it working

[lukasmatt]

I believe --no-sandbox does make it working

That finally worked for me. I am happy to contribute some debug logs if you tell me how :)

[CasperOng]

@lukasmatt You are welcome. I also want to know how to contribute to some debug logs xD. May I ask you a few questions?

What platform are you on?
What desktop environment or windows manager?
Do you execute teams --no-sandbox on terminal or you use another ways. If yes, how?

[lukasmatt]

@CasperOng sure thing :)

I am using Arch Linux with i3 as windows manager. But I think I found the problem.
I am quoting from the AUR package repository (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/teams):

Teams is now not compatible with glibc 2.35. It is upstream problem (aka Microsoft has to fix it/update). Here are the workarounds, which can be unstable or insecure. [...]

They suggest using --no-sandbox or --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox.

I guess I have to stay put. Downgrading libc is not an option for me.

[CasperOng]

@CasperOng sure thing :)

I am using Arch Linux with i3 as windows manager. But I think I found the problem.
I am quoting from the AUR package repository (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/teams):

Teams is now not compatible with glibc 2.35. It is upstream problem (aka Microsoft has to fix it/update). Here are the workarounds, which can be unstable or insecure. [...]

They suggest using --no-sandbox or --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox.

I guess I have to stay put. Downgrading libc is not an option for me.

Thanks.
I am using Arch Linux with highly modified KDE. I install it with Snap. And so far i have not been facing this problem xDD

But when I first try installing team using AUR. I got this issue thats why I am here btw.

[ScarletFlash]

teams --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox worked for me (Ubuntu 22.04)

[sbow]

fyi - fixed with "CTRL + R" w whitescreen in focus...

Setup:

• Corporate login w 2 factor auth required & loading of corporate login screen
• CTRL + R made the login screen showup (white previously)
• Linux Mint 21.2

❯ cat /etc/*-release
DISTRIB_ID=LinuxMint
DISTRIB_RELEASE=21.2
DISTRIB_CODENAME=victoria
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 21.2 Victoria"
NAME="Linux Mint"
VERSION="21.2 (Victoria)"
ID=linuxmint
ID_LIKE="ubuntu debian"
PRETTY_NAME="Linux Mint 21.2"
VERSION_ID="21.2"
HOME_URL="https://www.linuxmint.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forums.linuxmint.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://linuxmint-troubleshooting-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.linuxmint.com/"
VERSION_CODENAME=victoria
UBUNTU_CODENAME=jammy
cat: /etc/upstream-release: Is a directory

[ipaqmaster]

On a laptop here of a 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1255U CPU which comes with integrated graphics 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [UHD Graphics] [8086:4628] (rev 0c).

No matter how much I reinstalled teams or fully wiped all of its relevant subdirs under my homedir it was starting up with white panels (Which stole focus from every other window during Teams startup) and eventually full-screen white where the SSO screen were supposed to render.

This went away entirely after launching it with --disable-gpu then going to settings and disabling graphical acceleration so it persists at startup without needing the flag.

Not sure why teams doesn't like this laptop's onboard i915 graphics.