Setting up Airpods Pro on Ubuntu 20.04
If you have apple airpods or airpods pro, and sometimes want to use it with your Ubuntu machines, follow this guide! If you try to pair airpods without doing any of these steps, most likely the pairing process will never complete.
This is a compilation of ideas from few askubuntu posts.[1] [2]
To enable pairing of airpods, you will need to update the ControllerMode
to bredr
from the default value of dual
. This can be done by editing the file /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
. Then restart the Bluetooth service using sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart
command.
You should be able to pair your airpods now and use it as headphones!
Enabling Airpods as Microphone
In order to have airpods work as microphones, you will need to enable HSP/HFP profile. However, Pulseaudio by default only supports HSP. In order to make HSP/HFP work, you have to enable HFP on pulseaudio which needs ofono
. Here are steps to enable HFP on pulseaudio using ofono on Ubuntu 20.04.
Install
ofono
using:sudo apt install ofono
Configure pulseaudio to use ofono:
Goto
/etc/pulse/default.pa
, find the lineload-module module-bluetooth-discover
and change it toload-module module-bluetooth-discover headset=ofono
.Add the user
pulse
to groupbluetooth
to grant the permission:sudo usermod -aG bluetooth pulse
VERY IMPORTANT: To grant the permission, add the following code snippets to
/etc/dbus-1/system.d/ofono.conf
(before</busconfig>
):<policy user="pulse">
<allow send_destination="org.ofono"/>
</policy>In order to make ofono work, you have to provide a modem to it! You can install a modem emulator called
phonesim
(implemented byofono
) to make it work:install
ofono-phonesim
:sudo add-apt-repository ppa:smoser/bluetooth
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ofono-phonesimConfigure
phonesim
by adding the following lines to/etc/ofono/phonesim.conf
:[phonesim]
Driver=phonesim
Address=127.0.0.1
Port=12345Now, restart
ofono
service as:sudo systemctl restart ofono.service
Now you will need to define and enable few services to start the
ofono-phonesim
as service.To run
ofono-phonesim -p 12345 /usr/share/phonesim/default.xml
on startup as a systemd unit, create the file/etc/systemd/system/ofono-phonesim.service
(as root) with the following contents:[Unit]
Description=Run ofono-phonesim in the background
[Service]
ExecStart=ofono-phonesim -p 12345 /usr/share/phonesim/default.xml
Type=simple
RemainAfterExit=yes
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.targetAfter ofono-phonesim runs, you’ll need to also enable and put the phonesim modem online.
You will first need to use this githup repo:
As pointed in comments below, you might need a particular git commit for it to work the way it worked for me. The particular commit that I used the commit
b3682c6bab99cbe301fa9bf4a2416c3f730d8bfd
from the repo.cd /tmp
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/ofono/ofono.git
git checkout b3682c6bab99cbe301fa9bf4a2416c3f730d8bfd
sudo mv ofono /opt/Now you can enable and make phonesim modem online by creating another
systemd
unit file that depends on the aboveofono-phonesim
systemd
unit. Put the following contents in/etc/systemd/system/phonesim-enable-modem.service
:[Unit]
Description=Enable and online phonesim modem
Requires=ofono-phonesim.service
[Service]
ExecStart=/opt/ofono/test/enable-modem /phonesim
ExecStart=/opt/ofono/test/online-modem /phonesim
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.targetThen run the following commands to run both daemons:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable ofono-phonesim.service
sudo systemctl enable phonesim-enable-modem.service
sudo service phonesim-enable-modem startCheck if the service is running with
sudo service phonesim-enable-modem status
Finally, restart pulseaudio
with pulseaudio -k
.
Now you should be able to switch to HSP/HFP profile for airpods and use it as an input device / microphones.
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