53

I am looking for a way to check to see if the bluetooth is enabled or disabled on my laptop via the terminal. Is there a command that I can use to find this information

muru
  • 207,228
ForgeSHIELD
  • 655
  • 1
  • 5
  • 8

6 Answers6

43

In addition to checking for the service you can use the command 

hcitool dev

that will return all devices turned on.

user67465
  • 1,073
23

More information with hciconfig -a

hciconfig -a provides way more information, including the Bluetooth version.

$ hciconfig -a
hci0:   Type: Primary  Bus: USB
    BD Address: 00:1A:7D:DC:70:13  ACL MTU: 310:10  SCO MTU: 64:8
    UP RUNNING PSCAN 
    RX bytes:1013 acl:0 sco:0 events:60 errors:0
    TX bytes:4890 acl:0 sco:0 commands:60 errors:0
    Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0xdb 0xff 0x5b 0x87
    Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3 
    Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK 
    Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT 
    Name: 'hostname'
    Class: 0x1c0104
    Service Classes: Rendering, Capturing, Object Transfer
    Device Class: Computer, Desktop workstation
    HCI Version: 4.0 (0x6)  Revision: 0x22bb
    LMP Version: 4.0 (0x6)  Subversion: 0x22bb
    Manufacturer: Cambridge Silicon Radio (10)
Serge Stroobandt
  • 5,719
  • 1
  • 54
  • 59
19

Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, You can run this command to see the status of bluetooth 

sudo service bluetooth status

after you enter your password, you should see something like

bluetooth is running

Mitch
  • 109,787
8

With BlueZ: Using bluetoothctl (interactive bluetooth control tool), which gives you a terminal with show and these other commands (highlighted the more common ones):

[bluetooth]# help
Menu main:
Available commands:
-------------------
advertise                        Advertise Options Submenu
scan                             Scan Options Submenu
gatt                             Generic Attribute Submenu
list                             List available controllers
show [ctrl]                      Controller information
select <ctrl>                    Select default controller
 devices                          List available devices
paired-devices                   List paired devices
system-alias <name>              Set controller alias
reset-alias                      Reset controller alias
 power <on/off>                   Set controller power
pairable <on/off>                Set controller pairable mode
discoverable <on/off>            Set controller discoverable mode
discoverable-timeout [value]     Set discoverable timeout
agent <on/off/capability>        Enable/disable agent with given capability
default-agent                    Set agent as the default one
advertise <on/off/type>          Enable/disable advertising with given type
set-alias <alias>                Set device alias
scan <on/off>                    Scan for devices
info [dev]                       Device information
 pair [dev]                       Pair with device
trust [dev]                      Trust device
untrust [dev]                    Untrust device
block [dev]                      Block device
unblock [dev]                    Unblock device
 remove <dev>                     Remove device
 connect <dev>                    Connect device
 disconnect [dev]                 Disconnect device
menu <name>                      Select submenu
version                          Display version
quit                             Quit program
exit                             Quit program
help                             Display help about this program
export                           Print environment variables

With bluez-tools: bt-* (apropos bt-) like bt-device, a bluetooth device manager.

Pablo Bianchi
  • 17,371
6

rfkill will show you a list of network devices and if they are on or off.

Andrea
  • 3
flyingdrifter
  • 326
5

An alternative is to use the command hciconfig. It will list clearly the interfaces, and you will see by the marker "RUNNING" or "DOWN" what is their current status.

Apteryx
  • 498