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How can I tell if my laptop has a Bluetooth adapter?

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  • 2
    Does it have the hardware, or you need to enable in Ubuntu?
    – Mitch ♦
    May 29, 2013 at 11:34

10 Answers 10

Reset to default
60

Your kernel would have picked it up and loaded a module for it when you started Ubuntu. From the command line, gnome-terminal type this command:

dmesg | grep -i blue

If you get output simliar to the below then your laptop has bluetooth capability.

[    2.933062] usb 1-1.4: Product: Broadcom Bluetooth Device
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    This solution didn't produce correct results in my case. See my answer.
    – landroni
    Mar 26, 2015 at 21:55
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    That won't work if it's been a while since you booted the laptop. The kernel ring buffer has a limited size and keeps only the latest messages. Alternatively you can try journalctl -b.
    – x-yuri
    Dec 19, 2020 at 10:14
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Using lsusb:

sudo lsusb |grep Bluetooth

Should give an output similar to: 

Device 005: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)

If there is no bluetooth device, you'll get no output for this command.

Courtesy: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup#Manual_Discovery

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  • 5
    Do you really need sudo? Here it works without...
    – landroni
    Mar 25, 2015 at 21:31
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    Please be aware that this will not work if your bluetooth device is using UART, not USB (if it is part of a SOC). In this case only dmesg will work.
    – RhodanV5500
    May 18, 2017 at 7:50
  • Mine did not show up, but it works. Could it be connected with PCIe? It is a Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377.
    – David Jonsson
    Feb 1, 2022 at 23:51
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on my Asus laptop i have a Bluetooth icon on the top right and

dmesg | grep Blue

Gets:

[    3.757769] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16
[    3.757798] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[    3.757802] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[    3.757805] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[    3.757814] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[    3.767297] Bluetooth: Generic Bluetooth USB driver ver 0.6
[    4.332846] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[    4.332853] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[    4.332856] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11
[    4.340772] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[    4.340776] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast

but: sudo lsusb |grep Bluetooth Doesn't return anything.

also check if you have a Hardware network (airplane mode) switch. This can disable bluetooth and make it not visible to Ubuntu

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  • 5
    The above dmesg output is not indicative of bluetooth devices. It even shows up in my desktop with no bluettoth facility. So the above output bears no use in this particular case. But if it gives something liek [ 2.933062] usb 1-1.4: Product: Broadcom Bluetooth Device at the top as @kingmilo pointed out then it shows that you have device.
    – saji89
    May 30, 2013 at 6:36
  • But I'm puzzled regarding the output in your system. Was your bluetooth device disabled(by hardware switch) when you executed: dmesg | grep Blue and sudo lsusb |grep Bluetooth ?
    – saji89
    May 30, 2013 at 6:38
  • BT was enabled and working when the above output was giving. no HW switch on my laptop (Asus G73)
    – TiloBunt
    Aug 2, 2014 at 22:20
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    No blue teeth on my laptop and still dmesg | grep -i bluetooth shows Bluetooth messages, which I think are more related to /etc/init/bluetooth.conf than actual hardware
    – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
    Mar 30, 2015 at 23:43
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All of the proposed answers failed to produce a correct result in my case. To detect whether my laptop indeed has a Bluetooth adapter I had to follow these instructions: 

sudo apt-get install bluez-utils

Then: 

sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

The above to make sure that you have installed all that is needed, and that all was properly initialized. Now: 

geek@liv-inspiron:~$ hcitool dev
Devices:
    hci0    00:11:95:00:1A:CF

Note that your Bluetooth device will have a different ID. I also had to make sure that in Blueman Bluetooth was Turned On.

Before or after both lsusb |grep -i bluetooth and dmesg | grep -i blue do NOT output anything of interest (i.e. empty). Yet, the Bluetooth adapter is physically present and I can send files to another device...

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  • 6
    in 16.04 the package to install is sudo apt-get install bluez-tools
    – pd12
    Dec 26, 2016 at 5:16
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    Since BlueZ 5.44 hcitool is deprecated. You can either use bt-adapter -l or bluetoothctl devices.
    – mirh
    Sep 13, 2018 at 19:37
  • sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart helpled me to activate bluetooth and find a mouse.
    – Yeheshuah
    Nov 27 at 11:45
2

You laptop may likey have a bluetooth mac address printed on a sticker near the battery on the underneath of your laptop.

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There is no way to find it out precisely. Some bluetooth modules are not supported by linux kernel and may not be detected.

Generally, you would look for bluetooth modules in lsusb and lspci outputs. But even if a module is supported, there may be output, which does not contain "bluetooth".

For instance, I have a working Atheros AR3012 bluetooth module.

lsusb shows it as 13d3:3408 IMC Networks.

It was not supported initially, I made a kernel patch to get it work. Now this patch is applied to all Ubuntu supported kernels.

If you are sure that you have bluetooth, and it does not work in Ubuntu, report this to launchpad by running in terminal

ubuntu-bug linux

And in addition to information collected by apport add output of sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/usb/devices terminal command.

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Why not using lshw (list hardware) and catch for the word blue in case insensitive mode -i

sudo lshw | grep -i blue
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In addition to commands posted, each of which might fail reporting the Bluetooth adapter on occasion, you could try

$ hciconfig -a
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There is an easier solution.

  1. Press the Super (Windows) key.
  2. Search "Bluetooth".
  3. This should tell you if you have a Bluetooth adapter. I don't so mine said "No Bluetooth adapters found". I'm not sure what it would say if you have one but it should be obvious.
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  • see mine shows up with a bluetooth icon in the upper right hand corner and when i search it pops up as well but i cant seem to connect it to anything
    – Azarius Jenkins
    Jun 24, 2016 at 21:09
  • when you put you bluetooth visible "ON", and type hcitool dev the bluetooth is showed.
    – user496637
    Oct 2, 2017 at 18:14
  • What are you searching with, i.e. what is your Super key mapped to? In 18.04 (Gnome shell) I get a view of all the windows, and I think that is the default now.
    – nealmcb
    Oct 13, 2019 at 15:11
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If you are not seeing output in dmesg, etc. You may need to install the kernel module

modprobe btusb

Then you can check dmesg, etc.

[Thu Jul 14 21:56:21 2022] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[Thu Jul 14 21:56:21 2022] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[Thu Jul 14 21:56:21 2022] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[Thu Jul 14 21:56:21 2022] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[Thu Jul 14 21:56:21 2022] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[Thu Jul 14 21:57:27 2022] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[Thu Jul 14 21:57:27 2022] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[Thu Jul 14 21:57:27 2022] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized

(if you wish to ensure that kernel module loads at boot time, add it to /etc/modules.

echo "btusb" >> /etc/modules

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