4

Is there a way to do this without installing extra packages?

mordecai iwazuki
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2 Answers2

9

You can control whether your bluetooth signal is enabled with rfkill. Wrapping this in a little Bash conditional allows you to toggle the state easily:

#!/bin/bash
if rfkill list bluetooth | grep -q 'yes$' ; then 
    rfkill unblock bluetooth
else
    rfkill block bluetooth
fi

You could save the above in a script file anywhere (e.g. ~/bin/toggle-bluetooth) and make it executable (chmod +x FILENAME) to be able to bind that command to a keyboard shortcut in the system settings.

Alternatively, you can put it in a single line bash command and directly paste that into the shortcut:

bash -c "if rfkill list bluetooth|grep -q 'yes$';then rfkill unblock bluetooth;else rfkill block bluetooth;fi"
Byte Commander
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    This worked wonderfully. I knew about rfkill block/unblock but I couldn't figure out a nice way to do the if statement because I don't know how to use grep. Thanks so much! – mordecai iwazuki May 19 '19 at 21:00
  • If you want a neat oneliner, simply make it `bash -c "rfkill list bluetooth|grep -q 'yes$' && rfkill unblock bluetooth || rfkill block bluetooth"`, which uses the status of the grep to either unblock or block bluetooth. This is in general a nice shorthand for if-statements in bash or shell scripts. – Joeytje50 Oct 01 '19 at 13:58
  • @Joeytje50 note that this shortcut is slightly flawed as it will also run the block command if the unblock failed with non-zero status, not only if the grep was unsuccessful. – Byte Commander Oct 02 '19 at 12:26
0

If you want to not only toggle bluetooth itself, but also the connection to a specific device, you could use the script below. I use it in Ubuntu 20.04 to toggle my bluetooth connection to my speakers. It checks if the connection is already established or not and toggles it accordingly.

Note that it has the MAC address of my speakers hardcoded.

!/bin/bash

# Toggle connection to bluetooth device

mac="90:03:B7:17:00:08" # DEH-4400BT

if bluetoothctl info "$mac" | grep -q 'Connected: yes'; then
    echo "Turning off $mac"
    bluetoothctl disconnect || echo "Error $?"
else
    echo "Turning on $mac"
    # turn on bluetooth in case it's off
    rfkill unblock bluetooth

    bluetoothctl power on
    bluetoothctl connect "$mac"
    sink=$(pactl list short sinks | grep bluez | awk '{print $2}')

    if [ -n "$sink" ]; then
        pacmd set-default-sink "$sink" && echo "OK default sink : $sink"
    else
        echo could not find bluetooth sink
        exit 1
    fi
fi
mivk
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