If your Bluetooth device is not reporting its battery level in Ubuntu and you want it to, there is a way to get it to appear.
I know because I was in the same situation.
I recently bought a Majority Atlas sound bar from Amazon (to listen to music in the kitchen). It’s a decently-reviewed wireless Bluetooth speaker with rechargeable battery and great range. It works great with Ubuntu, apart from one thing: I can’t see its battery level.
Like most desktop Linux distributions, Ubuntu uses Bluez for its Bluetooth stack.
Bluez is a powerful, open-source Bluetooth stack that supports a huge range of Bluetooth hardware from mice and keyboards to game controllers and headphones.
Usually, if you pair a Bluetooth device that has a rechargeable battery on Ubuntu, you can check its battery level from Settings > Power.
If your Bluetooth thingamajig shows its battery status on Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS, it should show it on Ubuntu too.
Alas, it isn’t always that simple.
As I discovered with my sound bar, many modern Bluetooth headphones, speakers, sound bars, and audio equipment do not report their battery levels on Linux — but there is something you can try.
Enabling Bluez’s experimental features can make battery levels for Bluetooth devices show up on Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions.
Some Linux distributions (including Fedora Workstation) dp enable these extraneous features by default, but Ubuntu doesn’t – so you you need to turn them on yourself. Don’t worry; it’s not difficult.
To enable Bluez experimental features in Ubuntu:
- Open
/etc/bluetooth/main.confas root - Find the section titled ‘General’ (near the top)
- On a new line add
Experimental = true - Save the file (and hit save again to make sure)
- Reboot or run
systemctl restart bluetooth
Do not skip the last step – if you do, nothing will change and you’ll think this hasn’t worked.
With Bluez experimental features are enabled in Ubuntu, proceed to pair/connect your Bluetooth device as before. Now open Settings > Power (or check the output of bluetoothctl info and look for a ‘battery percentage’ line’):
Et voila: the missing battery level now show.
At least, they did for me.
I can’t guarantee this tweak will make device battery levels appear for everything (or make a device work at all), but it’s an easy enough tweak to try (to undo: remove the lines you added) that, even if it doesn’t work, is one more thing you have tried.
Let me know how you get on!