Replacing Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Ubuntu 20.04

Since I have installed ubuntu 20.04 I am facing problems with my bluetooth headset microphone not detected by the system. My headset worked perfectly with Windows. Also, I am not able to switch to HFP from AD2P in ubuntu. So my final thought is to remove pulseaudio and install pipewire hoping that it will solve my problems.

Can anyone please provide the steps to do the same? I have searched it quite a few times but not able to get to the correct steps.

Thanks a lot!

I was facing the same issue with Oneplus Wireless Z Bass edition. My headset microphone was not detected by PulseAudio and the problem is that my headphones don't have HSP profile, only HFP profile. After trying for 2 days, I came to the solution of replacing PulseAudio with Pipewire sound server, which supports HSP, HFP and A2DP by itself. So there will be no need to install any other utility like ofono, phonesim. Also, to be noted that my problem wasn't resolved even after following all the steps to configure ofono in PulseAudio. So I came up with the steps to replace PulseAudio with PipeWire.

Here is the detailed article I have written to resolve this problem, the steps of which I'm also adding here. You can follow it and most probably be able to solve your problem.

Bluetooth headset microphone not detected

Open your terminal and follow these steps:

We will use a PPA for adding Pipewire to Ubuntu 20.04, which is maintained regularly:
```
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipewire-debian/pipewire-upstream
```
To update the PPA packages in your system do:
```
sudo apt update
```
Install the package:
```
sudo apt install pipewire
```
There is also a dependency needed to be installed with Pipewire, otherwise you will face the issue of “Bluetooth headset won’t connect after installing pipewire”. Install the dependency by:
```
sudo apt install libspa-0.2-bluetooth
```

Now, to install the client libraries:

sudo apt install pipewire-audio-client-libraries

Reload the daemon:
```
systemctl --user daemon-reload
```

Disable PulseAudio:

systemctl --user --now disable pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket

If you are on Ubuntu 20.04, you also need to “mask” the PulseAudio by:
```
systemctl --user mask pulseaudio
```

I am not sure but, if possible, you can try to run this on other versions too.
9. After a new update of Pipewire, you also need to enable pipewire-media-session-service:

   systemctl --user --now enable pipewire-media-session.service

You can ensure that Pipewire is now running through:
```
pactl info
```
This command will give the following output, in Server Name you can see:
```
PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.28)
```
Things should be working by now and you can see your microphone.

If it doesn’t show up, then try restarting Pipewire by this command:

systemctl --user restart pipewire

Edit: You need to uninstall ofono and phonesim from your system if you have them installed.

sudo apt remove ofono
sudo apt remove ofono-phonesim

If it’s still not showing your microphone, you can try rebooting once and remove and pair your Bluetooth device again to check if it works now.

I hope I have helped you solve your problem.

If you want to rollback all the changes we did, you can do it by using:

systemctl --user unmask pulseaudio
systemctl --user --now disable pipewire{,-pulse}.{socket,service}    
systemctl --user --now enable pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket

To add to 1nfern0's answer, pactl info was giving me a connection failure after following all the steps. I got around it by running: systemctl --user --now enable pipewire pipewire-pulse.

You may also need to restart your system once.

The answers above were important, there is one other thing that is possible which is that you have an old config file in /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf which will prevent pipewire from properly working, I removed the entire /etc/pipewire directory and reinstalled pipewire and pipewire-pulse to resolve the issues and now things work.

After completing the steps described in 1nfern0's answer (when PipeWire is working), you can use the following Bash script to toggle between A2DP (high fidelity playback, with the microphone disabled) and mSBC (for usage as a headset, with the microphone enabled):

#!/bin/bash

# Toggle your bluetooth device (e.g., Bose Headphones) between A2DP mode (high-fidelity playback with NO microphone) and HSP/HFP, codec mSBC (lower playback quality, microphone ENABLED)
function tbt {
    current_mode_is_a2dp=`pactl list | grep Active | grep a2dp`
    card=`pactl list | grep "Name: bluez_card." | cut -d ' ' -f 2`

    if [ -n "$current_mode_is_a2dp" ]; then
        echo "Switching $card to mSBC (headset, for making calls)..."
        pactl set-card-profile $card headset-head-unit-msbc
    else
        echo "Switching $card to A2DP (high-fidelity playback)..."
        pactl set-card-profile $card a2dp-sink
    fi
}

The above script is an adaptation from: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1973205#p1973205

Replacing Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Ubuntu 20.04

Related

Recent Posts