Why are some of my screen-recording/capturing/sharing applications (or app features) not working in Ubuntu 17.10 (and later releases)?

After upgrading to Ubuntu 17.10 I noticed some of my screencasting applications are not working, for example screencasting tools like SimpleScreenRecorder and vokoscreen. (link)

Also I noticed features like screenshot from GIMP is not working properly, producing blank screenshots (link). Shutter too is producing glitchy screenshots (link).

Screen-sharing option on Skype is also not working (link).

The issue occurs sometimes on later Ubuntu releases too.

Why is this happening and how do I fix this?

Ubuntu 17.10 by default lets users log in to a GNOME environment on a Wayland session. You may check whether you're logged into a Wayland session instead of an Xorg (X11) session by running the following command in Terminal:

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

Applications which are not compatible with Wayland yet run under a XWayland compatibility layer. But advanced applications, which depend on and/or control X11 server "too much" (screen-capturing/recording etc.), might fail to run in a Wayland session.

As a workaround you may switch back to an Xorg session.

Try Green Recorder. It supports Wayland & Xorg and it will work with Ubuntu 17.10. For installation instructions please check this link

Open terminal and run all the below commands one by one

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossproject/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install green-recorder
green-recorder