Pulseaudio not detecting bluetooth headset automatically

Question

The Pavucontrol on my Xubuntu 13.10 detects my bluetooth headset, but only after I type the commands :

pulseaudio -k
sudo alsa force-reload

After a few seconds the headset appears in the configuration tab.

I have also tried inserting the line

load-module module-switch-on-connect

in the /etc/pulse/default.pa but it doesn't help. I have tried purging and autoremoving and reinstalling everything right from alsa to pulseaudio and pulseaudio-module-bluetooth. Nothing works.

Is there a workaround to load the headset without using the command force-reload ? To make the pulseaudio daemon recognize the device automatically ?

I tried adding :

    pcm.bluetooth {
    type bluetooth
    device "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX"
    profile "auto"
   }

to a file .asoundrc in my home directory but it doesn't make a difference

After killing the pulseaudio daemon, my even volume hotkeys stop working. I have to assign

amixer set Master 4%- -q unmute
amixer set Master 4%+ -q unmute

to some other key combination to manage the volume from keyboard. Assigning the commands to the hotkeys doesn't work. How are the volume keys bound to the daemon ? Is there any other way of binding the keys to the new daemon (after restarting) ?

UPDATE

Found the problem. Using the command

pactl list | grep -i module-bluetooth-discover

I found out that the bluetooth discover module was not loaded.

But my default.pa file in /etc/pulse contains the lines

.ifexists module-bluetooth-discover.so
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
.endif

So why does the module not load on pulseaudio startup ?

After issuing the command

sudo pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover

The bluetooth headset works properly and is detected automatically, without killing and restarting alsa.

Answer 1

I found a fix for this on another answer, the problem is that the pulseaudio bluetooth module is loaded before X11, changing a couple of config files do the trick: PulseAudio can not load bluetooth module 15.10/16.04/16.10

vim /etc/pulse/default.pa

Comment out (with an # at the beginning of the line) the following line:

#load-module module-bluetooth-policy
#load-module module-bluetooth-discover

Now edit the file /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 find the following lines:

   if [ x”$SESSION_MANAGER” != x ] ; then
    /usr/bin/pactl load-module module-x11-xsmp “display=$DISPLAY session_manager=$SESSION_MANAGER” > /dev/null
   fi

and change them to this:

   if [ x"$SESSION_MANAGER" != x ] ; then
    /usr/bin/pactl load-module module-x11-xsmp "display=$DISPLAY session_manager=$SESSION_MANAGER" > /dev/null
   #
   # Added per StackExchange http://askubuntu.com/questions/366032/pulseaudio-not-detecting-bluetooth-headset-automatically
   #
    /usr/bin/pactl load-module module-bluetooth-policy
    /usr/bin/pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover
   fi

This way the Pulse audio’s Bluetooth modules will not be downloaded at boot time but after x11 is started.

This fix goes against the current suggestion at: https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/Bluetooth/

Answer 2

This:

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth 
sudo pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover

worked for me on Ubuntu 14.10 (Lenovo x240) to have at least my bluetooth device listed in pulseaudio.

Answer 3

It seems there is an issue with some (legacy?) code in Blueman which deliberately unloads module-bluetooth-discover on startup (i.e. after it's been loaded from /etc/pulse/default.pa. For more details see here: https://github.com/blueman-project/blueman/issues/64.

Answer 4

I know this is a bit of an old post. But as I recently had the same problem I came across a rather simple solution: just install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1909957

good luck with that :)

Answer 5

After analize tons of post my conclusion is that blue man is unloading deliberately the module module-bluetooth-discover, so in my case the solution was uninstall blueman from my system. After that, everything works ok.

Answer 6

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

Worked for me too, but it was not persistent after a reboot, and I also had to manually set the default audio device in volume control each time.

Adding it to .profile also didn't work - unless it was preceded with an 8 second sleep delay.

Found a solution that worked persistently with just a few clicks:

Right-click the blueman icon -> Plugins

And disable the PulseAudio plugin.

Answer 7

[UPDATE]

On KXStudio there is an special setup with Cadence, the right files to edit are located at /usr/share/cadence/pulse2jack/, there are 2 files play.pa and play+rec.pa. Add this to both:

load-module module-bluetooth-policy
load-module module-bluetooth-discover

[Original - good for debugging]

On Ubuntu+KDE and KXStudio I'm using an autostart script like this:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
sleep 10
/usr/bin/pactl load-module module-bluetooth-policy
/usr/bin/pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover

ALSO, make sure you did this as well:

sudo apt install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pavucontrol

It is very important to have pavucontrol in order to switch among profiles (high fidelity A2DP or headset HSP/HFP)

AND, if you are unlucky, then it might be due to your antenna settings, so try this:

sudo rfkill unblock 0
sudo hciconfig hci0 up

Now enjoy your wireless headset!

Answer 8

Running Xubuntu 13.10 64bit I had the same problem. Loading module-bluetooth-discover manually fixes the problem. I it also fixes it permanently. I rebooted and the headset worked without loading module-bluetooth-discover. Seems it has to be successfully connected once and then it's working fine.

I wonder why default.pa contains module-bluetooth-discover and the module is present on disk but it is not listed in pactl list?

Also look at configuration tab in pavuvontrol and set the profile of the headset. I have the choice between off/a2dp/hfp, default was off, so no pulseaudio input or output appeared even though the headset was connected.

Answer 9

I also have this problem on ubuntu 14.04. The simpliest solution is just add official blueman devs ppa:
https://launchpad.net/~blueman/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
It works for me after update.