Bluetooth Pairing¶

Use the board with a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse and controllers only, with no USB ones needed, also on a new board and after a fresh install. After every boot the app's service looks for the devices you listed and pairs the ones in pairing mode, on the login screen, before anyone logs in.

Using it¶

Add… the devices to pair. Pick one Bluetooth knows (paired before, or found with Search nearby while it is in pairing mode), or type its name exactly as the device gives it.
Switch on Pair the listed devices after every boot. It installs a small system service and asks for your password.
From then on, after a boot, put the keyboard and the mouse in pairing mode: hold the connect button until the light blinks fast. They connect within a few seconds, on the login screen.

The list shows each device with what Bluetooth knows of it: connected, paired, known, or not seen yet. Remove takes a name off the list; the device itself stays paired. Once the service is installed, a changed list waits for Save, which asks for your password once.

The header shows whether Bluetooth is on, whether the service pairs after boot, the controller batteries and what Plasma does with Bluetooth at login. The small round i beside them says the same in short.

Pair after boot¶

For 5 minutes after every boot, the service searches for the listed devices and stops as soon as every one is connected:

A listed device in pairing mode is trusted, paired and connected.
A listed device that was paired before reconnects. One that refuses its old pairing twice (it was paired with another computer, or reset) is removed and paired again.
Devices with other names are never paired. Every DualSense calls itself the same, so any DualSense nearby in pairing mode is paired while none is connected; once one is, another is left alone.

Search now searches again without a reboot, for another 5 minutes: put the device in pairing mode first. It asks for your password. The search after this boot at the bottom shows what the search did, with the time of each line.

A name can be copied by someone nearby with deliberate effort. The search is limited to the listed names and to the first minutes after a boot.

Controller batteries¶

A DualSense or DualSense Edge reports its battery through its own driver, not through Bluetooth, so the Bluetooth icon shows no battery for it, as it does for a keyboard or a mouse. Show controller batteries in the Bluetooth icon installs a second small service that hands each controller's battery to Bluetooth every 30 seconds. It uses Bazzite's own D-Bus and GLib for Python (python3-dbus, python3-gobject).

Plasma switches Bluetooth on or off when you log in. By default it restores the state it saved when the last session ended. A reboot from a terminal, or one that an update starts, stops Bluetooth before the desktop session ends, so Plasma saves it as off. The keyboard and the mouse then work on the login screen and stop as soon as the desktop appears, with nothing to say why.

Switch Bluetooth on at every login sets Plasma's own setting (System Settings, Bluetooth, When logging in: Enable Bluetooth), so Bluetooth is on at every login whatever was saved. It is your own setting and asks for no password. Switched off, Plasma restores the saved state again. On another desktop than Plasma it does not apply.

Install¶

Install it from the portal (the Utilities tab), or from a checkout of the repository:

apps/btpair/install.sh                         # the app, its launcher, a menu entry and a Desktop icon
apps/btpair/install.sh --no-desktop-shortcut   # without the Desktop icon
apps/btpair/install.sh --uninstall             # remove it; --purge removes its settings too

The launcher is ~/.local/bin/ps5-bluetooth-pairing; the app runs on the suite's shared Python environment. You need a keyboard and a mouse once, to install the app and list the devices.

Files¶

~/.config/ps5-bluetooth-pairing/ps5-bluetooth-pairing.ini: the list, while the service is not installed.
/etc/ps5-bluetooth-pairing/ (boot.py, boot.json), /etc/systemd/system/ps5-bluetooth-pairing.service and /etc/systemd/system/ps5-bluetooth-pairing-battery.service: the search after boot and the controller batteries, only while one of them is on. The names and the two choices are in boot.json. Uninstalling removes them; it asks for the sudo password then. What the search did: journalctl -b -u ps5-bluetooth-pairing.
~/.config/bluedevilglobalrc, launchState under [General]: Plasma's Bluetooth at login. Uninstalling leaves it as it is: it is Plasma's own setting.

License¶

GPL-3.0-or-later.