I am one of those poor bastards that had a hell of a time getting my Airpods working with Linux. Searches led me to going to /etc/bluetooth/main.conf and changing ControllerMode to “bredr”. This got the AirPods working, but then my bt keyboard and mouse wouldn’t connect.
What I wound up doing was switching ControllerMode to bredr, connecting the airpods, then switching ControllerMode back to “dual”. That kept them connected and allowed other devices to also connect.
So, now I’m sharing this for other poor bastards like me who could t get them to work with the steps that are out there.
This worked in Fedora 38 and will be testing with Ubuntu 23.04 and maybe arch today.
In general I recommend to just get a bluetooth audio adapter. They typically just work with linux and you don’t have to deal with the bluetooth part. They will simply show up as audio device and that’s it. They are also fairly cheap (between €10 and €30).
So it’s like a dongle plugged in via USB?
You could say so. Or you could consider it a “soundcard” plugged in via USB (that conveniently connects to your bluetooth headset).
IMHO this is more a hack than a solution. I love it when things just work out the way they should on Linux as well as on any other OS. Having to use half-baked solutions like this might really turn away potential Linux users.
Then again, I never had major software-related Bluetooth audio issues on Linux, apart from general lag / audio-video offset. But this is an even bigger issue on Windows afaik…
It’s not half-baked. Dedicated bluetooth chips can also achieve far better performance. Some of these devices pack qualcom chips that can do lowlatency audio out of the box. And you can use them on basically any device (PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, etc.; everything that allows usb audio devices). I also use it on Windows and it saves me a lot of trouble there; even though Windows does have bluetooth drivers as well.
Both AirPods 1st gen and AirPods Max worked for me perfectly fine without any tweaks. Maybe it’s an issue with your Bluetooth adapter?
I’m running Manjaro, and after installing blue man, and pairing I’ve not had any issues. Thankfully!
I do need to manually switch between a2dp and headset modes when I do video conference calls. I’m just used to doing it now. Heh made an easy keybind for my profiles so it’s not bad.
I’ve tried these on multiple Manjaro builds and have always worked. Maybe I was just lucky with Arch and Manjaro supporting this. Phew!
Other than the problem, how are you finding them? I’ve found them the best earphone investment I’ve ever made. They are awesome and so portable. Used them on the plane a bunch and they are great :)
I haven’t had any problem on Garuda with my AirPods. I saw another guy say he had no problems with manjaro and arch. I didn’t know people were having problems on other distros or setups.
Got no issues with AirPods Pro and arch. Installed blueman and it’s dependencies and it connected just fine. Managed to configure pipewire to automatically switch between a2dp sink and hsp depending on the current usage.
I use AirPods Pro with NixOS without much trouble, though I use the mic on my webcam rather than the AirPods to avoid switching between headset/headphone modes and the audio quality changes that brings. I do sometimes have connection oddities where audio will break up after a couple minutes, but that’s always fixed by a two-click disconnect/connect cycle, so I started doing that preemptively and haven’t had those connection problems since.
I’ve read this can depend a lot on the bluetooth card. Personally after replacing my cheapo dongle from like 2012 that probably just didn’t do a recent enough BT version I didn’t have any issues connecting to them.
What card do you have? Might be useful for anyone else who has the same issue.
