bthandler

A simple interactive tool to:

• connect to already paired devices
• disconnect bluetooth devices
• pair new ones
• unpair already paired devices
• turn bluetooth on/off
• blacklist paired devices to not be listed in connection selection
• trust devices

all via dmenu. Should be easily extendable by editing the actions string.

Installation

Edit the Makefile to reflect your preffered installation destination. Then, simply

make install

Note: If you don't change the Makefile sudo is not required and might break the blacklist and hardcoded pair list.

Afterwards, invoking bt will start the menu.

Clear blacklist/pairlist

Since bluetoothctl paired-devices seems to be hugely unreliable in listing paired devices, bthandler has a seperate list for all devices paired through bthandler. There is also a blacklist available to not display certain devices, which might be useful for autoconnection Bluetooth mice for example.

To clear these files, simply run

make clear

and these files will be reset to their inital, empty state.

Note: If for some reason bluetoothctl paired-devices works for you dont worry, bthandler lists all devices returned from bluetoothctl and it's own paired devices list. (Duplicates are not displayed.)

Uninstall

To uninstall you might follow that it's a simple

make uninstall

If you have troubles with an uninstall, additionally run which bt | xargs rm.

Troubleshooting

If bt takes long to show a menu

consider turning off AUTOSCAN. If there are many devices around you autoscanning will add them all to your bluetoothctl devices list. Every device on that list get's checked whether it's connected at startup.

This should only be an issue if bluetoothctl scan off is unreliable for you though.

TODO

• start scanning for new devices immediately at execution to save time when pairing new devices
• auto-trust newly paired devices/trust device via dmenu (changeable via the AUTOTRUST variable in the beginning of bt, menu display adjusts accordingly)
• blacklist devices via dmenu (action is hidden, but typing blacklist as your choice will reveal the menu)
• update bthandler internal paired devices list if something new shows up via bluetoothctl paired-devices not already listed in the paired devices file
• only show disconnect option if devices are already connected
• find a way to get something similar to grep -vf without the need of temp files.
• only list connected devices to disconnect from, not all paired devices
• only list not trusted devices in trust menu
• selecting already connected device disconnects it