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Running Skype on Ubuntu with a Bluetooth headset

October 01, 2009

Pairing my Bluetooth headset to the laptop was easy, but it took a bit of digging to get it working with Skype. The steps I followed are below.

Find the MAC address of the headset:

hcitool scan

Paste the following into ~/.asoundrc:

pcm.headset {
    type bluetooth
    device 00:00:00:00:00:00
    profile auto
}

Enable the sound drivers:

sudo hciconfig hci0 voice 0x0060

Tell PulseAudio that the Bluetooth headset exists:

pactl load-module module-alsa-sink device=headset
pactl load-module module-alsa-source device=headset

*Note that the above commands will have to be executed after every reboot. I suggest throwing them in a shell script for easy access.

Once paired, you may open Skype and set the sound device settings to use the Bluetooth headset.