Bluez package update carries welcome patch

Ubuntu 24.04 Fixes Bluetooth Audio Connection Issues

If you’re an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS user regularly experiencing issues with connecting to audio devices, there’s an important update to the Bluetooth stack rolling out this week.

A slew of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS users complained that certain paired Bluetooth audio devices (mainly earbuds/phones) fail to reconnect after a system restart or suspend.

Plus, for many noble users reporting bugs, even attempting to manually connect to a previously-paired device following a reboot or suspend fails to connect or stay connected thus requiring the need to remove and re-pair the device to work.

—Until the next reboot/suspend.

The cause?

Based on an upstream bug report in Bluez, the Bluetooth stack Ubuntu uses, it’s down to a Linux kernel change (“Bluetooth: MGMT/SMP: Fix address type when using SMP over BREDR/LE”) that causes issues for Bluez reading stored device keys.

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Not all audio devices appear affected, and those on Ubuntu 24.10 won’t have hit this issue at all since it ships a newer version of Bluez patched to fix the issue.

That handy patch has now been back-ported to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as a stable release update (SRU).

With the update installed, bluetooth audio devices that were having issues—again; not all were—should gracefully reconnect after a reboot or resumption from suspend.

Ubuntu users who helped test the patch prior to the update reported success once it was installed.

One said the update “…fixed the auto-reconnect for my Oneplus Nord Buds. They now reconnect after resume from sleep and also when switching between devices with a long-press on the headphones.”

Another reports success with Bose QC45 headphones, noting: “After installing it, my headphones connected without a problem. Rebooted computer and headphones connects perfectly fine – great patch! \o/”.

If you’ve experienced issues (or even if you haven’t), go run an update check, install the Bluez 5.72-0ubuntu5.1 update (and its related packages), reboot, and all should work well.