$ bluetoothctl
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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Are you even a true power user if you don't tattoo your headphones MAC address on your forearm?
If a power user, perhaps. But for a good UX enjoyers:
$ bluetoothctl devices
Letters? On my screen? Instead of icons and pictograms that I can click with my mouse? Preposterous!
You can move your mouse over them. 😆
I just tab and pray
Paired devices are stored and have proper names
What if your heaphones break?
This. Bind connect command to a keyboard shortcut. Live in peace.
Statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged
Joke's on you, it was my keyboard that had connection issues! Wait, no. That joke was on me.
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Ngl I really want to know what the tick icon actually does now.
If you hover on it (without clicking, resist the temptation) it says it is for "Mark/unmark this device as trusted".
Which in turn doesn't quite explain what happens. For me, the relevant difference was that 'trusted' devices autoconnect.
Well there's "trusting" a device, "pairing" with a device and "connecting" to a device. Which need to be done in that order
Which makes it even more confusing what the button does
This bastard of an app manages to expose too much of the underlying processes and logic, of which I don't care, in the utterly uninformative format. The OP forgot to mention that upon first pairing my headphones, I have to fend off three different notifications about ‘auth requests’, that provide me with no explanation what happens if I do or don't satisfy said requests. These also reappear after the headphones disconnect for some inexplicable reason, until I give up on learning further details and click ‘always auth’. Which seems to help with the disconnections. Apparently some audio profiles are also occasionally unavailable unless I appease the blue fucker with ‘always auth’.
Sometimes the headphones fail to connect, and all I get is some cryptic error message, with the only understandable word being ‘timeout’.
The tray menu has a shitload of items which I never need, and then always lists devices to which I can reconnect, even when they're already connected and have separate (and dynamic) menu items to disconnect from them. Plus each device is listed like they have titles of nobility, something like ‘audio and input profiles on HeadphonesModel’.
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You can pair and connect without trusting. It will ask for authorization.
Alright, do not trust device. Guess what that mf autoconnects anyways!
Afair it pairs the selected bluetooth device. It will then enable the button left to it, to add the selected and connected device as trusted.
My assumption for the key icon was something to do with PINs/passkeys, which kind of reinforces OP's point.
Exactly! Why did two of the icons get icon+text label status, while the others got just icon status?!
Either standardized on icon + text label, or just icon, or just text.
We stopped using pictogram representations of concepts 2000 years ago and pivoted to symbols representing speech sounds, why are we regressing to pictograms again?
Love the format, such shade
I personally like its adamant REFUSAL to be bullied into showing the actual state of devices. DMESG knows, because notifications show the correct state, but Blueman is over here IE6ing.
Wow I see this post exactly one day after spending 4 hours tearing my hair out trying to connect a switch pro controller using blueman only to find out that I apparently have to use bluetoothctl because blueman can't for some reason.
Anyone run into this problem?
I feel like there's something you need to use bluetoothctl for on every system
For me it was trying to pair with a meshcore companion using a passcode
a meshcore heathen? in this economy? serves you right for not using meshtastic
/s
Meshtastic is completely dead here, apart from a few derelict repeaters. Meshcore is alive and linking 4 states on the east of Australia
I've only worked once with a UX person and all they did was order other people to produce design documents before any software was written. Like, he didn't design anything himself and didn't even critique others' designs. He made over $300K and eventually left for a job on the west coast making twice as much. He stopped talking to me entirely after the client had me write a prototype TV guide-type app for Blackberry. I created it entirely myself and the client loved it and wanted it released to the public exactly as it was. UX guy insisted (client didn't care at all) that all software needed a design document before any coding could take place, so he was forced to order somebody else to produce a design document for my app which already existed. He wouldn't even look at me when we passed in the hall after this.
I assume that this is not actually what a UX person is supposed to be doing, but I have no idea what their real job is.
The issue with newly emerging and poorly defined professions is that I could apply to any arbitrary position of that title, pretend like I've got expertise in a universal structure for it (managers love structure) and sound vaguely knowledgeable (hiring managers often don't know the subject matter).
By the time they've figured out that I'm not actually contributing anything of value, I'm taking off to other pastures that aren't about to wilt, my experience serving as selling point for the next sucker to hire me.
Of course, the people I just fucked over have no way of telling whether that's me being a fraud or whether it's the entire profession that's actually worthless and overhyped. Some, like you, err on the side of "I assume that person was a cunt", while others default to "UX is completely useless".
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I'm guessing that the design documents might've been something in the vein of ‘user stories’ (if I correctly recall their name), which describe what some typical users would want to do with the app, so that the actual UI design would focus on these features being available front and center. This is a very legitimate design technique, and a good designer should always question why any elements must be present in the UI and whether they solve the user's goals.
This Blueman thing would definitely benefit from such approach, because right now it exposes a lot of technical details about which I don't care, while simultaneously making my everyday operations with it inconvenient.
By the way, @ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world, I brought up user stories in particular because they should be initially written or at least verbalized by either the target users or clients like managers. Neither designers nor programmers can know exactly what the target user's needs are, or they may think they know but be mistaken — because they don't have what's called the domain knowledge, i.e. expertise of the target users.
Of course, another major tool in a designer's workflow is testing with target users before release, including with rough mockups — so any misunderstanding of users' goals and workflow can be caught in time.
For the context, I'm a dev who mostly does backend. But understanding design is interesting and helpful.
another major tool in a designer’s workflow is testing with target users before release
Lol you should have seen this UX dude's face when I suggested doing exactly this. It's hard to imagine an actual live human being saying "users don't know what they want" but that is exactly what he said. It should be no surprise that this company routinely produced one-star apps, and also no surprise that the company was a routine winner of the Worst Company of the Year contest.
Yeah that dude was just a dick, but probably confidently, and in a field people don't know much about, so he was able to get away with it.
I work with UX people frequently, and while they do love a good style guide, they're usually more concerned with the overall usability, legibility, and accessibility of an application. They're the people who (should) ensure your application works as expected and follows design and accessibility standards.
follows design and accessibility standards
Ah, this reminded me of another reason this dude hated me. One of my responsibilities with this gig was ensuring that the client's mobile apps passed accessibility testing. Making an app accessible is tedious work and every time we released an update the accessibility would be broken again. I tried to get this dude to bake the accessibility requirements into the design documents themselves on the off chance that the other developers would actually read the documents (lol as if) and make accessibility work from the get-go. He wasn't having it and couldn't be convinced that it mattered if blind people could use the apps or not. I had to sic the client (who faced enormous fines for failed accessibility tests) on him to get him to do it.
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In my Head I'm Reading all of this in Tantacrul's voice
I love this window.
So true
That's why I, as a seasoned programmer, keep my fingers out of UI design. I leave that to the professionals.
Is there a simple GUI for bluetoothctl?
most intuitive qt software
lol no bluetoothctl
When received signal strength maxes out, it might be indeed too much to transmit at full power because the devices are apparently close enough for lower power (that uses less energy from the battery and reduces interference, even with itself through reflection) to suffice. But that's the other way around. Also, the desktop Linux device is usually not the more battery-constrained one in the pair.
The top right quick-settings panel in gnome does the job for me
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