Ubuntu – Automatically switch sound output device to Bluetooth headset & force to A2DP profile on connection

bluetoothpulseaudio

My bluetooth headset (Plantronics Backbeat Go2) is connected just fine with my system, but there are several manual steps I have to take to make this work that I would very much like to have automated:

After every reboot I have to run pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover in the terminal to get the device to connect at all. I tried putting this in a shell script to run on start up, but no dice 🙁
My headset connects automatically with no issues, but it always defaults to Telephony Duplex or even Off instead of A2DP; I've tried and failed with several different strategies to force A2DP 🙁
Force the BT headset to be the default output device. Tried several strategies here, too… unfortunately every time I connect the headset the index from pacmd seems to change, so I can't force a default in the PA conf file set-default-sink that way. And using the listed name doesn't seem to work either – if the headset is not present, it switches to the speakers and doesn't switch back if the headset connects 🙁

Thanks for any advice you might have on resolving these issues!

Best Answer

This worked for me: https://sandalov.org/blog/2146/

Instructions copied here for posterity:

Add to /etc/pulse/default.pa to automatically switch pulseaudio sink to Bluez:

.ifexists module-bluetooth-discover.so
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
load-module module-switch-on-connect  # Add this
.endif

Modify/Create /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf to auto select A2DP profile (instead of HSP/HFP):

[General]
Disable=Headset # Add this

Apply changes:

pulseaudio -k # Restarts pulseaudio

# You may need to turn your bluetooth headphones off, then back on

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Ubuntu – Bluetooth headphones problem (ubuntu 16.04)

I have finally found the answer in this thread: No sound from bluetooth headset, but it's detected This script https://gist.github.com/pylover/d68be364adac5f946887b85e6ed6e7ae#file-a2dp-py just fixes the problem. Works flawlessly

Ubuntu – Bluetooth profile locked to A2DP (high-quality audio sink) but cannot change to HFP/HSP (low-quality bidirectional headset)

EDIT: also try connecting using Blueman. I don't know why PulseAudio has so much trouble but simply opening Blueman, right-clicking on my headphones in the overview, and selecting Audio Profile > Headset Head Unit (HSP/HFP) fixed it for me. I have since stopped and removed oFono and it still seems to work.

I had a similar (the same?) problem with my Bose QC35 II and fixed it by following these instructions ("Using HFP with oFono").

I'm on Debian buster so things might be a little bit different for you.

Install ofono and ofono-phonesim:
```
sudo apt-get install ofono-phonesim
```

Clone the oFono Git repository (currently at cf850de632):

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/ofono/ofono.git
cd ofono

List the available modems you have:
```
./test/list-modems
```
It'll probably have no modems, which is not surprising on a modern Linux desktop. But for reasons I don't really understand you really do need to have some sort of modem to get headphones to work, so we're going to simulate one now.
Start by simulating one (you can probably pick a different port if you want):
```
ofono-phonesim -p 12345 /usr/share/phonesim/default.xml
```
Modify /etc/ofono/phonesim.conf to use this simulated modem. My Debian version was so kind to put something in there already but commented it out. This is what it looks like for me now (without the comments):
```
[phonesim]
Driver=phonesim
Address=127.0.0.1
Port=12345
```
Restart oFono:
```
sudo service ofono restart
```
Check that the device is now listed:
```
./test/list-modems
```

Enable the device:

./test/enable-modem /phonesim

If you get an error like this, make sure your phonesim is up and running:

Connecting modem /phonesim...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./test/enable-modem", line 20, in <module>
    modem.SetProperty("Powered", dbus.Boolean(1), timeout = 120)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 70, in __call__
    return self._proxy_method(*args, **keywords)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 145, in __call__
    **keywords)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 651, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.ofono.Error.Failed: Operation failed

Check that the device is now powered on using ./test/list-modems.

Hopefully it works now! You may need to restart other services too (bluez, pulseaudio).

I can now pick my headphone as an input device. It will cause the device to use very low quality audio but at least it works. Make sure to switch back to "High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink)" when you're done with the microphone as you'll otherwise get very low quality audio output.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Bluetooth headphones problem (ubuntu 16.04)

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