Remote participant's video shows black screen on React Native since v2.19.2

[besfortmehmeti]

Describe the bug

After upgrading livekit-client from 2.19.1 to 2.19.2, the remote participant's camera renders only a black screen on React Native (@livekit/react-native). Rolling back to 2.19.1 fixes it. Web is not affected.

Reproduction

1. Connect a web client and a React Native client to the same room.
2. On the RN client, render the remote camera with VideoTrack.
3. On 2.19.2: the remote video is black. Audio, signaling, and the local camera preview all work fine.
4. Pin back to 2.19.1: remote video renders correctly.

System Info

livekit-client: 2.19.2 (regression) / 2.19.1 (works)
@livekit/react-native: 2.11.0
@livekit/react-native-webrtc: 137.0.3
react-native: 0.84.1
OS: iOS & Android

Severity

blocking an upgrade

Additional Information

It looks like the remote video stream is arriving but never actually decoding/rendering on React Native.
Introduced by the v2.19.2 changes (#1963). It works on web because React Native takes a different internal connection path.
Temporary workaround: pin livekit-client to 2.19.1.

[1egoman]

@davidliu Would you be able to weigh in here?

[davidliu]

@besfortmehmeti are you connecting the react-native client first, and then the web client afters in both cases? I do see some rendering issues, but it seems to be applying to both versions. This may be due to the single peer connections changes prior to 2.19 altogether I think.

[davidliu]

For now, use the old dual peerconnection path by passing singlePeerConnection: false to the room options:

<LiveKitRoom
  serverUrl={url}
  token={token}
  connect={true}
  options={{
    singlePeerConnection: false,
    // ...
  }}
  audio={false}
  video={true}
>
  // ...
</LiveKitRoom>

[jintajinta]

We also reproduced this issue, and in our case it additionally caused a native crash (not just a black remote video). Sharing our findings, and confirming the workaround.

Extra symptom (beyond the black screen)

The black remote video is the first stage. If the remote participant then disconnects and reconnects, the receiving (Android) client crashes natively — SIGABRT on the WebRTC signaling thread:

F libc : Fatal signal 6 (SIGABRT), code -1 (SI_QUEUE) in tid (signaling_thread), pid (app)
#00 abort
#01–#13 libjingle_peerconnection_so.so

The crash only happens on the participant that joined first and is Android. If that participant is iOS, no crash regardless of the other side's OS. The trigger is always "the remote peer rejoins". (With a remote iOS peer, it appears only after that peer has been backgrounded once; a fresh task-kill → join is fine.)

Bisection — it's livekit-client, not @livekit/react-native / @livekit/react-native-webrtc

We initially suspected the RN SDK or the WebRTC fork (the m144 bump), but holding those constant and changing only livekit-client isolates it cleanly:

@livekit/react-native	@livekit/react-native-webrtc	livekit-client	Result
2.11.0	144.1.0	2.19.0	✅ OK
2.11.0	144.1.1	2.19.0	✅ OK
2.11.0	144.1.1	2.19.2	❌ black video + crash
2.11.1	144.1.1	2.19.2	❌ black video + crash

Same RN SDK and same WebRTC fork (144.1.1 / libwebrtc 144.7559.05); only livekit-client 2.19.0 → 2.19.2 flips it. Matches the OP — the regression is in livekit-client 2.19.2 (#1963 / single-PeerConnection path), RN-specific.

Workaround confirmed ✅

Passing options={{ singlePeerConnection: false }} to LiveKitRoom (per @davidliu's suggestion) resolves both the black video and the native crash on our side — on the latest versions (@livekit/react-native 2.11.1, @livekit/react-native-webrtc 144.1.1, livekit-client 2.19.2), no downgrade needed.

Env: react-native 0.83.x, Android 12 (arm64); the other side can be iOS or Android — both trigger it.

[lukasIO]

closed via #1984