LiveKit Community

why does the camera for my remote participant turn black/off when im not active on the screen? If i switch to another tab in chrome and wait a couple of seconds all other participants will see black screen instead of my track. Why is that?

Thanks for reaching out, Marcus. I'm an AI assistant and I'm here to help. Give me a moment while I research this topic.


Hey there! What you’re seeing happens because LiveKit’s adaptive streaming is set up to pause the video when you switch to another tab in Chrome. This helps save resources and bandwidth. It’s controlled by the `pauseVideoInBackground` option in the `AdaptiveStreamSettings`, which is turned on (`true`) by default.

If you’d like to keep the video playing even when you’re on a different tab, you can change that setting in your LiveKit client by setting `pauseVideoInBackground` to `false`. This way, your video keeps streaming no matter what tab you’re on.

Just give me a shout if you want a hand with updating this setting—I’m happy to help!
