OpenSUSE 15.0 LEAP pulseaudio unable to detect bluetooth speaker

Question

I would like to stream my music through my Bluetooth speaker but PulseAudio can't see the speaker. When I open the sound settings (pavucontrol) I can't change the output device to my speaker since it's not displayed.

What I already checked

• The speaker is paired and connected through the Bluetooth interface in GNOME. I verified the connection using the bluetoothctl tool and made sure that the device is connected and trusted by OpenSUSE.

• I checked if PulseAudio can see the device through the command line using pactl list sources short and pactl list sinks short and it's not there either.

• I verified if PulseAudio has the right Bluetooth addon installed and it has.

• Removing the configuration in ~/.config/pulse doesn't help

• This question: Pulseaudio not detecting bluetooth headset couldn't help me either.

It worked a couple months ago without any issue but now it doesn't. Any advice to force PulseAudio to recognize my Bluetooth speaker?

Setup:

• UE Boom Bluetooth speaker
• GNOME OpenSUSE Leap 15.0
• Pulseaudio 11.1
• BlueZ 5.48

Answer 1

Try these steps to resolve the bluetooth audio issue on Opensuse Linux- These would work in ubuntu and other linux too. I am running on Opensuse linux 15.

First comment out the line load-module module-bluetooth-discover by editing the sudo vim /etc/pulse/default.pa

Now you would need to reboot after this change is done. After rebooting, we configure the bluetoothctl by running the following sequence of commands in a terminal:

>  pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover
>  bluetoothctl
>> power on
>> agent on
>> default-agent
>> discoverable on
>> scan on

scanon will return with the name of the bluetooth speaker along with a code in the format '11:11:11:11:11:11' - thats ur bluetoooth speakers id. Note that down and use it in the next command trust and connect.

>> trust 11:11:11:11:11:11
>> connect 11:11:11:11:11:11
>> scan off

• Do not close this terminal.

And these are all thats required to connect to a bluetooth speaker/headphone. YOu can put the above in a script say - connectbluettooth.sh and run it everytime you login.

Last step change the speakers settings, your applications uses by running the below command:-

pavucontrol - Change the default audio device to the bluetooth speaker.

You can see my bluetooth speaker - 'Juarez' set in the pavucontrol tool in the screenshot.