Ubuntu 20.04 no sound out of Bluetooth headphones

Solution 1:

This is a bug (pulseaudio #832, launchpad #1866194) with new version of pulseaudio in Ubuntu 20.04 where old config values have not been cleared and it is not routing to the correct device. The solution is to delete the old config and restart pulseaudio:

Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the following commands:

mv ~/.config/pulse/ ~/.config/pulse.old
systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

A pulseaudio fix #298 is currently in progress.

Solution 2:

It's not a fix, only a workaround; I installed pulse audio volume control utility:

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

The problem seems that Ubuntu doesn't change all the audio sources to the Bluetooth device, in the volume control utility you will see this more clearly, the Bluetooth device is connected but not used as audio playback device. (see pulse audio volume control utility).

Find your audio source; mine was firefox since I was playing some videos from YouTube, and select the Bluetooth playback device (mine was a Xiaomi speaker) (XMFHZ02) and change it. Your device should start outputting audio.

Hope it helps

Solution 3:

I reinstalled, and it worked, without having to reboot:

sudo apt install --reinstall pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

Then re-connect the Bluetooth headset

Solution 4:

I had a similar problem, this worked for me.

Install Pulse Audio with Bluetooth module:

$ sudo apt install pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

Open it and select the desired output channel in Playback tab.

The tool allows tweaking also other sound settings.