Anyone able to use Ubuntu laptop with Jabra Elite 85 Wireless earbuds?

Please forgive a more conversational style question, not sure where else to ask this.

Ubuntu 18.04. I'm seeking a guide, tutorial or general pointers. I'd like to know if anyone has been able to use Jabra Elite 85 wireless earbuds with their ubuntu laptop? I was able to connect via bluetooth while attempting to listen to a podcast on my ubuntu laptop but the earbuds behaved as if they were in phone call mode not regular listening mode, so controls and sound behaved differently than desired. I'd like to be able to use these earbuds with my laptop for both calls and regular listening. Has anyone been able to get this set up?

Secondary question if the above fails, does anyone have a wireless bluetooth earbud recommendation that works out of the box or with minimal fiddling to get them working with Ubuntu?


I use jabra elite 75t with Ubuntu 21.04 and they were working a charm for both Configurations: Headset Head Unit (HSP/HFP) and High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink). These are found in Settings > Sound, under the Output section.

Recently updated the jabra device's firmware to 2.0.0 (Active Noise Cancelling, hooray!), and have had a few quirks. They still work perfectly with my phone which pointed to it being an Ubuntu driver issue, so I updated ubuntu software (inc. ubuntu base) and the quirks were still there.

Unpairing and re-pairing helped when it got into a bit of state with latching configuration, and so far so good again!