Same. Major issues. I opted out of the beta program for now, and it seem to be fixed for now.

On my computer, the windows are blank, but this might simply be a matter of system theme difference. Nonetheless, I have this problem on Mint as well. I hope that this gets fixed soon.

A similar issue happens on Arch. Trying to open a Steam Chat from a Steam Group resulted in it spawning multiple windows with nothing in them, all blank with the Steam background colour. Also had to opt out as it made Steam quite unusable.

Same on Arch with KDE. Black windows that keeps spawning new.

Here's what is printed on the console every time it spawns

[1105/151734.095422:ERROR:frame_sink_video_capturer_impl.cc(206)] Invalid resolutions constraints: 0x0 must not be greater than 0x0; and also within media::limits.
[1105/151734.106131:ERROR:frame_sink_video_capturer_impl.cc(206)] Invalid resolutions constraints: 0x0 must not be greater than 0x0; and also within media::limits.
[1105/151734.804863:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer
[1105/151736.132293:ERROR:frame_sink_video_capturer_impl.cc(206)] Invalid resolutions constraints: 0x0 must not be greater than 0x0; and also within media::limits.
[1105/151736.166775:ERROR:frame_sink_video_capturer_impl.cc(206)] Invalid resolutions constraints: 0x0 must not be greater than 0x0; and also within media::limits.
[1105/151737.017940:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer
[1105/151738.349787:ERROR:frame_sink_video_capturer_impl.cc(206)] Invalid resolutions constraints: 0x0 must not be greater than 0x0; and also within media::limits.
[1105/151738.376543:ERROR:frame_sink_video_capturer_impl.cc(206)] Invalid resolutions constraints: 0x0 must not be greater than 0x0; and also within media::limits.
[1105/151738.627601:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer
[1105/151740.010726:ERROR:frame_sink_video_capturer_impl.cc(206)] Invalid resolutions constraints: 0x0 must not be greater than 0x0; and also within media::limits.
[1105/151740.038404:ERROR:frame_sink_video_capturer_impl.cc(206)] Invalid resolutions constraints: 0x0 must not be greater than 0x0; and also within media::limits.
[1105/151740.273521:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer

If you disable GPU rendering for web views and GPU video decode in Steam settings then it has the same crashing behavior and it's white instead of black

And the log goes to only the crash reports

[1105/152856.462262:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer
[1105/152858.870972:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer
[1105/152901.131731:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer
[1105/152903.862634:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer
[1105/152906.171041:INFO:crash_reporting.cc(270)] Crash reporting enabled for process: renderer

The blank windows stop appearing after a bit, but the friends tab and features don't work at all!

If you are experiencing this, please post the full runtime info report from Help > System Information (while running the beta if at all possible) in a gist.

https://gist.github.com/echaskaris/089b506a2946cedaebb3e1b315d22667

https://gist.github.com/parkerlreed/24bc72112a4fe7ffb157b29060cd4348

https://gist.github.com/DraconYale/d717142b5f2b00f1595f280f1317926f

Thanks .. we've had some success reproducing.

Tried in X11 instead off wayland, still occurs.

Also seems to affect the in-game overlay. Seems like the chat also sometimes recover after a while

Also happening with Nvidia GPU
https://gist.github.com/Shyrak/a9948eee8984735804c26c0ffdf060c8

Assuming you have a recent SDL2 library on your host, can you try the following workaround:

• move ~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_64/libSDL2-2.0.so.0 out of the way (renaming it to libSDL2-2.0.so.0.off for instance)

This will make steamwebhelper fall back to your host's SDL library - which is not a good thing to do in general, but if the blank windows problem goes away that'll confirm it's in our patched SDL code.

@TTimo confirmed working on Fedora 32

Doesn't seem to work on Arch.

steam runtime and native, file appears to get recreated and problem persists (Both GPU accel on and off)

sdl2 2.0.12-3

I've been experiencing the same issue in the steam client on fedora 31
steam-1.0.0.66-2.fc31
Fedora release 31 (Thirty One)
kernel 5.8.18-100.fc31.x86_64

For me the file is recreated and the problem persists.
Ubuntu 20.04

Umm can you please update steam with the patched sdl thanks

One annoying thing about this issue, has been that it seemed to occur somewhat randomly.
I've found a reliable way to reproduce this issue, at least on my end. Every single time I try pasting an image from my clipboard into any chat window, this issue appears. Also looks like the image has to be sufficiently large.

To reproduce the issue, try the following:

1. Go to https://wcrates.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/cute-animal-photos.jpg
2. right-click the image, and select "Copy Image"
3. Open any chat with a friend
4. Press CTRL+V

For me the windows don't open at all! (white windows)

Next Steam beta update (> Nov 4) will fix this. I expect it might take a day or two to roll out (the fix is indeed via an SDL update).

Fixed with Nov 13 build.

What I posted here yesterday no longer reproduces this. Haven't been able to find another way to make the bug re-appear.
Nov. 13 build very likely fixed it indeed, as advertised

Working here as well.