Connecting a Bluetooth Speaker
To play the Raspberry Pi's sound through a Bluetooth speaker, pair the speaker and set it as the default output device. Put the speaker in pairing mode first.
From the Desktop
- Click the Bluetooth icon on the top taskbar and choose to add a device.
- Select the Bluetooth speaker found and pair it.
- Right-click the volume icon on the top taskbar and choose the Bluetooth speaker as the output device.
From the Terminal (Without a Monitor)
Connect over SSH, run bluetoothctl, and enter the following commands in order.
bluetoothctl power on agent on default-agent scan on
When the speaker's MAC address (for example FC:58:FA:71:88:2C) appears in the
scan results, pair and connect with that address, then exit.
pair FC:58:FA:71:88:2C connect FC:58:FA:71:88:2C exit
On Raspberry Pi OS with PipeWire, find the Bluetooth speaker's number in the
Sinks list of wpctl status and set that number as the default output
device. The default device is marked with *.
wpctl status wpctl set-default <ID>
You can also use pactl, which works on both PulseAudio and PipeWire systems. Copy the
Bluetooth speaker's name from the sink list, then set it as the default output and set the volume.
pactl list short sinks pactl set-default-sink <copied sink name> pactl set-sink-volume <copied sink name> 50%
Example: pactl set-default-sink bluez_sink.FC_58_FA_71_88_2C.a2dp_sink