If you’re an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS user regularly experiencing issues with connecting to audio devices, there’s an important update to the Bluetooth stack rolling out this week.
A slew of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS users complained that certain paired Bluetooth audio devices (mainly earbuds/phones) fail to reconnect after a system restart or suspend.
Plus, for many noble users reporting bugs, even attempting to manually connect to a previously-paired device following a reboot or suspend fails to connect or stay connected thus requiring the need to remove and re-pair the device to work.
—Until the next reboot/suspend.
The cause?
Based on an upstream bug report in Bluez, the Bluetooth stack Ubuntu uses, it’s down to a Linux kernel change (“Bluetooth: MGMT/SMP: Fix address type when using SMP over BREDR/LE”) that causes issues for Bluez reading stored device keys.
Not all audio devices appear affected, and those on Ubuntu 24.10 won’t have hit this issue at all since it ships a newer version of Bluez patched to fix the issue.
That handy patch has now been back-ported to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as a stable release update (SRU).
With the update installed, bluetooth audio devices that were having issues—again; not all were—should gracefully reconnect after a reboot or resumption from suspend.
Ubuntu users who helped test the patch prior to the update reported success once it was installed.
One said the update “…fixed the auto-reconnect for my Oneplus Nord Buds. They now reconnect after resume from sleep and also when switching between devices with a long-press on the headphones.”
Another reports success with Bose QC45 headphones, noting: “After installing it, my headphones connected without a problem. Rebooted computer and headphones connects perfectly fine – great patch! \o/”.
If you’ve experienced issues (or even if you haven’t), go run an update check, install the Bluez 5.72-0ubuntu5.1 update (and its related packages), reboot, and all should work well.