Zoom meeting window doesn't show in alt-tab under specific circumstance

[MatthewScholefield]

Describe the bug

When the below conditions are true, the primary Zoom meeting window doesn't show up in the alt-tab switcher. Conditions:

1. Zoom app is initially closed (and meeting is opened from a link)
2. Zoom meeting shows the preview window before joining the meeting

Other observations:

• No windows are maximized / full screened and this is all on a single space
• Re-opening alt-tab fixes it
• Switching between spaces and moving the window between spaces doesn't fix the problem

Screenshots / video

In this video I demonstrate this behavior and then I disable the video preview and show that it fixes the problem.

alt-tab-zoom-bug.mp4

Steps to reproduce the bug

1. Make sure you get a zoom video preview before joining a meeting (Enable "Always show video preview dialog when joining" within "Video" settings, Disable "Stop my video when joining" within "Video" settings)
2. Close zoom application
3. Open a zoom meeting directly from a link in the browser

You should now observe that when opening the alt-tab switcher the primary meeting window is missing from the list.

Your environment

• AltTab version: 6.64.0
• macOS version: 13.5.2
• Other relevant info: No external monitor, no multiple spaces

[lwouis]

Hi,

I updated to the latest Zoom. I'm on the latest macOS and AltTab.

I can't reproduce this issue. It shows windows correctly:

Untitled.mp4

[MatthewScholefield]

Can you try:

1. Completely close the zoom application (not just the window, but even close the app running in the background tray) and leave it closed when you open the meeting.
2. Use a real meeting link (I've created one you can use here). It looks like the test meeting has a different popup which could affect reproduction.

[lwouis]

Thank you for the help.

Unfortunately, following your steps, I still can't reproduce the issue:

Untitled.mp4

[MatthewScholefield]

Thanks for trying to reproduce. I think there's one more thing missing: we need the pre-meeting video preview to show up which I didn't see in the video you shared.

Could you by chance double check that these settings are enabled in the zoom app settings?:

Enable "Always show video preview dialog when joining" within "Video" settings.
Disable "Stop my video when joining" within "Video" settings

[lwouis]

I'm afraid that these settings are already set for me exactly as you mentioned:

[GLobyNew]

I think I was able to reproduce this issue. But not where OP showed.
There are several scenarios where Zoom has an extra window, but which is not shown in Alt-Tab.

For example, when you run Zoom for the first time, it shows that an update is available in a separate window
However, Alt-Tab does not see this window:

Also, when starting a Zoom conference, a separate window asks for access to the camera. However, this window itself does not appear in Alt-Tab:

out.mp4

I suspect this is not an Alt-Tab problem per se, but a problem with how Zoom handles windows.

[lonsdaleite]

I have exactly the same issue. Restarting AltTab helps to make Zoom call show up in AltTab.

[porridgewithraisins]

I have the same issue as well

[Brog33]

i have this issue too. the zoom window doesn't appear in alttab.

[gubbin]

Confirmed that:

• A long-running AltTab instance does not see Zoom meeting windows.
• If I restart AltTab while a meeting window is present, it will see the Zoom meeting window.
• If I close and then start a new meeting, AltTab still sees it. Same if I quit and restart Zoom.

I'm going see how long before my current AltTab instance stops seeing Zoom meeting windows.

[lwouis]

Hi,

To clarify the situation of this ticket:

• I wasn't able to reproduce the issue on my machine. Zooms shows correcty.
• It seems inconsistent, and different people have reported different issues

AltTab is working fine for 99% of apps. The 1% that have issues are because something is not properly coded with these apps.

I'm going to close this ticket. Please open tickets with Zoom, so they fix their app. It will show better in AltTab, and also in other Accessibility apps like AltTab, after they fix their implementation.

Thank you 🙇

[gubbin]

I'm going to close this ticket. Please open tickets with Zoom, so they fix their app. It will show better in AltTab, and also in other Accessibility apps like AltTab, after they fix their implementation.

I'm sorry to hear this, it seems to be a problem with long-running AltTab instances which makes reproduction difficult and slow. I'm going to see if I can repro anyway.

[Brog33]

It sounds like it could be the same issue with VICE GTK (C64 emulator).
The vice maintainer commented this:

What VICE does different (probably) is, that the actual rendered image (the emulated screen) is rendered with a custom GL overlay (because GTK can't do this properly). If that is the problem.... no idea if/how it can be fixed.

Do you think this could be the case @lwouis ?