Buttons on my bluetooth headset aren't working

Question

I have noticed, that although my "Bluetooth Headset" works perfectly fine, buttons on it, like Previous, Next, Play etc do not.

Why is that?

score 25 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 13 '10 at 00:58

25

As of Ubuntu 10.04, uinput module that handles such buttons is not started by default. To fix the situation:

Stop bluetooth service
sudo service bluetooth stop
Enable uinput module
sudo modprobe uinput
Start bluetooth service back again
sudo service bluetooth start

That should fix the issue temporarily, until restart. To fix it permanently, run:

echo 'uinput' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

answered Oct 13 '10 at 00:58

vava

1,362

1

worked for me in Ubuntu 14.04 – DmitrySandalov Apr 30 '14 at 08:10
Still needed and working in Kubuntu 18.04 – Lord_JABA Jun 29 '18 at 08:10
1

not working on my ubuntu 19.10. uinput does not appear with lsmod. I think it's an obsolete module – Daniel Pinyol Nov 26 '19 at 15:42
3

This is still needed in Ubuntu 18.04. It's pretty surprising this problem hasn't been fixed in 8 years. Hopefully in 20.04... – user1754322 Mar 15 '20 at 10:50
1

Still needed, and still helps, in 20.04 – aap Aug 19 '21 at 13:50
Worked in 22.04 as well – T-Dawg Oct 12 '23 at 15:19

BaconCatBug · Answer 2 · 2022-07-20T16:10:52.820

Vava's answer did not fix the issue for me alone (Ubuntu 20.04), I had to use, in addition, xbindkeys and playerctl https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xbindkeys

First, disable/unassign the shortcuts for media play and pause via the shortcut editor.

sudo apt install xbindkeys playerctl
xbindkeys -d > ~/.xbindkeysrc

Open ~/.xbindkeysrc and delete all lines between line 40 and 66 inclusive.

xbindkeys --key

Get the raw keycode (e.g. m:0x0 + c:209). Your headset might toggle between play and pause keycodes, so run xbindkeys --key twice to get code for both play and pause.

Put the following into your ~/.xbindkeysrc with the correct key codes.

"playerctl play-pause"
   m:0x0 + c:208t
"playerctl play-pause"
   m:0x0 + c:209

If your headset is already passing XF86Play or some other key (you can use screenkey to check, you can use the following instead as an example

"playerctl play-pause"
   XF86AudioPlay

playerctl play-pause will control "the first available player". Read playerctl -h for more info/options if needed.

Open /etc/X11/Xsession as root. Add the line xbindkeys after the line PROGNAME=Xsession.

Reboot.

My headset now correctly controls Youtube videos.

Maybe there's a small correction needed (I am not entirely sure). The keycodes you mentioned were spot on, except for the first one, which was m:0x0 + c:208 for me instead of m:0x0 + c:208t. I don't know much about keycodes, but if anyone runs into this issue, try changing the keycode like this and see if it works for you :D — Suyog Jadhav, Sep 17 '22 at 22:20

Buttons on my bluetooth headset aren't working

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