Arch Linux

cdunafon17

Member

Registered: 2025-11-29

Posts: 2

Only "Dummy Output" after connecting bluetooth headphones.

My audio has been just fine for months, but just the other night I connected some bluetooth headphones to my laptop, and now PulseAudio does not know the built in speakers are even there. pacmd list-cards returns 0 cards available. I've been searching for solutions, but nothing has worked. I uninstalled and reinstalled pulseaudio, rebooted a ton of times, installed different frontends, I never did any configuring to begin with, so I don't know what broke it.
This is the output of pactl info:

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 7
Tile Size: 65472
Server Name: pulseaudio
Server Version: 17.0-93-gbe2efb
Default Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: auto_null
Default Source: auto_null.monitor

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,514

Re: Only "Dummy Output" after connecting bluetooth headphones.

As a sanity check, do the version numbers reported by uname -a and pacman -Q linux match?  (Assuming you are using the stock kernel)

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cdunafon17

Member

Registered: 2025-11-29

Posts: 2

Re: Only "Dummy Output" after connecting bluetooth headphones.

Yes they do. Version 6.17.9.arch1-1

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,916

Re: Only "Dummy Output" after connecting bluetooth headphones.

Is pulseaudio the only sound daemon or have updates introdcued wireplumber which might now snatch the BT headphones?

sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
systemctl --user status pipewire{,-pulse} wireplumber pulseaudio 

Preempting the likely output of these commands, you probably want to switch to pipewire by installing pipewire-pulse and saying yes to the replacement of pulseaudio with e.g.

systemctl --user stop pulseaudio
sudo pacman -S pipewire-pulse
systemctl --user restart pipewire{,-pulse} wireplumber