Installing Google Chrome Remote Desktop messed up my box

Question

I was playing around with Chrome Remote Desktop and after a restart of my Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 box, things got really weird. First, I was prompted for a second entry of my password. Then, all my Google Chrome extensions were reset. And, finally, I noticed that I had no sound whatsoever.

After digging around in the audio settings, I discovered the following:

It looks like the original sound output was switched over to Chrome Remote Desktop with no option to reset it. Overall my computer felt like I was logged into a guest setting.

How the heck do I fix this?

Answer 1

This is what I did to fix the same issue. This way you don't have to restart your machine:

sudo rm -rf ~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop
killall pulseaudio
pulseaudio --start
gnome-shell --replace

It was also affecting my Gnome Apps. I was mad because I spent hours thinking it was because of my Yubikey since it's a U2F/FIDO2 Security Key. So I made sure to be forceful. I hope this is a cure-all for some folks until Google can make some fixes, I sent a feedback report to them about this.

Answer 2

There is some problem with Chrome Remote Desktop with Ubuntu. To get your system sound back for all applications you should remove the extension from both Chrome and Ubuntu.

Run the following command:

sudo apt-get remove chrome-remote-desktop

and restart Ubuntu.

Answer 3

Somehow I manage to make the audio work in Ubuntu 18.04 with Chrome Remote Desktop still installed, by creating file .chrome-remote-desktop-session in user folder

cd ~
touch .chrome-remote-desktop-session

and put this lines to the file

unset PULSE_CONFIG_PATH
unset PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH
unset PULSE_SINK
unset PULSE_STATE_PATH
DESKTOP_SESSION=ubuntu XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Unity /usr/sbin/lightdm-session 'gnome-session --session=ubuntu'

I don't know if restarting ubuntu is required or not, but I realize this works after reboot

Ref: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=496885

Answer 4

I found that by removing (rather, renaming) the ~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop directory and restarting, my sound defaulted to the standard line out.

Answer 5

I used this command to refresh the devices.

pacmd unload-module module-udev-detect && pacmd load-module module-udev-detect

It did the job, the sound test worked. Although, I was still not able to hear the sound in Chrome (YouTube or Hangouts, for example).

At least for now I ended up uninstalling Chrome remote desktop from my machine.

Answer 6

if you are disappointed in Chrome Remote Desktop app and want to uninstall it try these steps:

Uninstall New App

1. open new Chrome tab and navigate to chrome://apps
2. find Chrome Remote Desktop app there
3. right-click
4. select Remove from Chrome
5. A message may appear asking if you want to remove the app. Click Remove.

^{(source: https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/1053346?hl=en)}

Uninstall Old App

1. Open Terminal
2. sudo apt purge chrome-remote-desktop
3. sudo apt autoremove

Answer 7

So, I was looking at the sound settings again and found a link to the chrome-remote-desktop in the output, which I had not previously seen.

I ran:

sudo rm -rf ~/.config/chrome-remote-desktop
killall pulseaudio
pulseaudio --start
gnome-shell --replace

Sound has been working through the built-in speakers in all the apps I want.