It’s impossible to be expert at everything. Or even good at everything. One of the things that Ubuntu has frustrated me over is headphones. I’ve used wired headphones and they’ve worked great. But of course I’m tethered to the computer. I’ve used wireless headphones and they too have worked great. But I’m miffed that a USB port has to be dedicated to their use. Why should a USB port be lost to use headphones when the pc has built-in Bluetooth? Why can’t I just use Bluetooth headphones that I use with my phone and keep all my ports open for other things.
Why, because every attempt to use Bluetooth headphones has failed. Used as a headset they work fine, as headphones, not so much. Either the microphone hasn’t been picked up or the audio is unintelligible or non existent. And I know it isn’t the headphones because every set I’ve had that doesn’t work with Ubuntu has worked great with Android phones and with Windows after installing the headphone’s Windows program.
I’ve tried digging into the details of how to set up audio on Ubuntu to get Bluetooth headphones supported. And doing so, I’ve buggered up test systems to the point I needed to reinstall the OS to get sound working again. I obviously didn’t understand it well enough to resolve the issue. Even so, every once in a while I try again to make it work.
Recently, I came across the solution! Thanks to Silvian Cretu and his post Linux and Bluetooth headphones.
The post touches on many of the things I’ve tinkered with trying to make Bluetooth headphones work. The section, “Solution 2: Replacing Pulseaudio with PipeWire”, in Silvian’s post provides the recipe that makes it work. If you’re on Ubuntu 20.04 and are frustrated trying to make Bluetooth headphones work then head over to Linux and Bluetooth headphones and see if that is the recipe for you too.