Check Bluetooth headphones battery status in Linux

Question

Is it possible to get the battery status of Bluetooth headphones connected to Linux? Android shows it so I was wondering if it was possible.

Quite an old answer, not sure still works or not! https://askubuntu.com/questions/20698/battery-status-not-showing — Novice, Dec 12 '19 at 12:31

score 70 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 08 '23 at 16:09

70

I am not sure about the state under Ubuntu, but under Arch Linux you do not need to write your own scripts to get bluetooth battery information nowadays.

The bluez package has experimental support for querying bluetooth headset battery data. Simply enable experimental features by editing

/etc/bluetooth/main.conf

and adding the following line to the [General] section

Experimental = true

Then, you just need to restart the bluetooth service using

systemctl restart bluetooth

Reconnect to your device, and

bluetoothctl info

should now also show the battery status. e.g.

Device 28:11:A5:47:6C:6E (public)                                             
Name: Cloud Walker                                                    
Alias: Cloud Walker                                                   
Class: 0x00240418                                                            
Icon: audio-headphones                                                
Paired: yes                                                           
...                               
Battery Percentage: 0x3c (60)

The solution using upower as given by danjjl should also work now.

And now the battery level percentage should show up in Gnome Power settings dialog as well.

Before:

After:

edited Aug 08 '23 at 16:09

redseven

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answered Jul 26 '22 at 14:29

R. Hahnemann

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1

Thanks, just got this working on Arch thanks to your answer! It also gets it showing in the Power settings UI for Gnome too! Ubuntu must have enabled the Experimental bit in their upstream of bluez. I just added some UI screenshots as well as example output from bluetoothctl info. Oddly though, bluetoothctl info only shows one device, e.g. not my MX Master mouse battery as well. I'm looking forward to these battery levels showing natively in the system tray settings dropdown too! – Elijah Lynn Sep 07 '22 at 21:58
1

Thanks. Works on Ubuntu as well – Amorphous Feb 02 '23 at 12:09
1

Didn't work for me on Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS with 5.15.0-58-generic kernel. – Paloha Feb 03 '23 at 07:56
I was working to build a script and shows at status bar, but with this 50 % of work was skipped – ayelsew Apr 04 '23 at 21:51
4

It works under Ubuntu 22.04 – nelsonmau May 15 '23 at 14:25
2

This approach of enabling experimental features works great. However, this specific method of editing the /etc/bluetooth/main.conf does not work for me, at all. The method that does work is editing the /lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service to add --experimental flag, as can be seen in the docs. Cheers! – AneesAhmed777 May 21 '23 at 20:39
Did not work for me, but it might be because of Pipewire. Alirezas Python script also doesn't. – phil294 Jun 10 '23 at 13:11
works just perfect under openSUSE tumbleweed, thanks a lot mate! – Sombriks Oct 11 '23 at 03:25
Working on 23.10. (thanks!) – Rudy Vissers Oct 13 '23 at 14:11
@AneesAhmed777 Make sure to put the Experimental=true config in the [General] section of /etc/bluetooth/main.conf. The end of the file might not be the correct section. – Niklas Nov 19 '23 at 17:52
worked perfectly on Fedora 37, both bluetoothctl and gnome 43.9 – Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin Dec 14 '23 at 14:37

Alireza S.N · Answer 2 · 2020-04-13T12:30:41.570

24

I wrote a simple python script that does the job. It uses AT commands to communicate with the device via RFCOMM and prints the battery level if the device is supported.

https://github.com/TheWeirdDev/Bluetooth_Headset_Battery_Level

(You need Python 3.6.0 or newer to run the script)

It might not work with all bluetooth headsets but I've provided a couple of workarounds in the 'Issues' page that might help.

edited Apr 13 '20 at 12:30

answered Apr 04 '20 at 08:59

Alireza S.N

351

3

Thank you for doing the job for the community – Rafik Farhad Oct 26 '20 at 14:35
Thank you! Do you have print screens, just want to see how its looks like. – Qui-Gon Jinn Oct 28 '20 at 04:25
@Qui-GonJinn it's a command line tool. It simply prints the battery level, for example something like this: Battery level for XX:YY:ZZ:AA:BB:CC is 80% – Alireza S.N Oct 28 '20 at 05:19
1

Using port .2 I get <MAC adress> is offline (16, 'Device or resource busy'). Using other ports I get <MAC adress> is offline (111, 'Connection refused'). – sancho.s ReinstateMonicaCellio Mar 30 '21 at 08:01
1

Thank you for this. Worth adding that "bluetoothctl devices" shows the required MAC addresses – davidgo Jan 13 '22 at 19:47
@AlirezaS.N It gives me bluetooth.btcommon.BluetoothError: [Errno 16] Device or resource busy exception. (Trying to get battery status from Apple AirPods). – S.B Mar 14 '22 at 12:49

score 24 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 10 '21 at 20:00

24

In ubuntu you can go simply to settings->power to see the battery status of system and connected devices.

Yes, I know it's a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse on a Linux System ... but hey, Microsoft is the new cool company now ;)

This is what: systemctl status bluetooth

This is what: bluetoothctl devices shows:

The JBL was disconnected and the Creative speaker is connected with power. So the resulting ones with batteries (Keychron and Mouse) show up in the settings->power dialog.

NOTE: If upower -d not show the device, It's power level may not display in settings .
// I had a mouse shown, but a headphone not.

edited Jun 10 '21 at 20:00

yurenchen

441

answered Dec 02 '20 at 20:43

klaas

351

2

Unfortunately, I don't see the first section "Devices" on my machine. I've the same Ubuntu20.04.1 LTS. – Rajesh Chaudhary Dec 11 '20 at 06:40
@Rajesh Chaudhary Can you run a upower -d and see what the output is ? – klaas Dec 11 '20 at 22:25
Here you go @klaas https://pastebin.com/zskLJmtr – Rajesh Chaudhary Dec 13 '20 at 13:28
Hmm, seems you don't have any connected devices. Probably a last check if BT stack is running. You can check it with systemctl status bluetooth Which should state loaded and active. If that is the case you can use bluetoothctl which open an internal cli. Enter deviceswhich should give a list of the connected devices. I add the outputs for my system in the answer above. – klaas Dec 17 '20 at 11:58
I don't think so. I was connected to Bluetooth device & still connected now. Please see this once. https://imgur.com/a/HYgvg06 – Rajesh Chaudhary Dec 17 '20 at 16:59
3

Seems to be dependent on the device. I found the issue and comment from the maintainer below in the gnome.org gitlab issues Source,see here: Quote: ".. the device needs to show up in the output of upower -d to show up in the Power Settings panel (whether that's a laptop or a desktop). Right now, this means only devices which export their battery status in the kernel, and Bluetooth LE devices which export the battery via the BATT profile are supported..." – klaas Dec 19 '20 at 21:12

score 13 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 03 '20 at 22:57

13

upower can be used from a terminal to list power devices, listening to device events and querying history and statistics.

If your device is listed by upower -e you can run upower --dump to retrieve the battery level of your device.

Here is a sample output:

$ upower --dump
...
Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/mouse_dev_C1_FC_26_13_A9_58
  native-path:          /org/bluez/hci0/dev_C1_FC_26_13_A9_58
  model:                MX Anywhere 2S
  serial:               C1:FC:26:13:A9:58
  power supply:         no
  updated:              Wed 31 Dec 1969 06:00:00 PM CST (1550719462 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       no
  mouse
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        no
    state:               unknown
    warning-level:       none
    percentage:          50%
    icon-name:          'battery-missing-symbolic'
...

src reddit

answered Feb 03 '20 at 22:57

danjjl

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It did not show the bluetooth device, just the ac adapter, laptop battery and displaydevice. – gabs1bb3 Feb 27 '20 at 07:30
@gabs1bb3 It shows. – Éderson T. Szlachta Jul 03 '20 at 19:44
1

@ÉdersonT.Szlachta not always. My phone can show the battery status of my device but Ubuntu (18.04) can't. – Saren Tasciyan May 31 '21 at 10:52
@gabs1bb3 Need to restart bluetooth daemon and reconnect the bluetooth device before upower method. – Akarsh Jain Mar 19 '23 at 05:32

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 29 '20 at 23:31

3

I have developed a GUI application to get the battery level of a bluetooth headset. You can check it on: https://github.com/Coutj/Bluetooth_project.git

answered Jul 29 '20 at 23:31

Coutj

41

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 21 '21 at 18:28

1

For Airpods devices download and run https://github.com/delphiki/AirStatus with:

git clone git@github.com:delphiki/AirStatus.git
cd AirStatus
pip3 install bleak
python3 main.py

answered Sep 21 '21 at 18:28

morhook

1,610
14
23

Check Bluetooth headphones battery status in Linux

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