Newer Raspberry Pi models such as the Raspberry Pi 4 come with Bluetooth capabilities built in. To get started using Bluetooth on your Raspberry Pi, you will have to make sure that the service is enabled. This allows the device to utilize the Bluetooth hardware to connect to peripheral devices like mice, keyboards, and headphones. If you are not planning to use Bluetooth, then you may want to keep it disabled in order to minimize unnecessary overhead. In this tutorial, you will see how to enable or disable Bluetooth on the Raspberry Pi model 4.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to enable or disable Bluetooth on a Raspberry Pi 4
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Raspberry Pi |
| Software | N/A |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Raspberry Pi 4 enable/disable Bluetooth step by step instructions
- First, let’s start by checking the current status of the Bluetooth service. This will show us whether Bluetooth is currently enabled or disabled on the Raspberry Pi.
$ systemctl status bluetooth
Checking to see if Bluetooth is currently enabled or disabled on Raspberry Pi As you can see in the screenshot above, the output indicates that the Bluetooth service is active (running).
- To start the Bluetooth service, we can execute:
$ sudo systemctl start bluetooth
- To turn Bluetooth off, we can enter:
$ sudo systemctl stop bluetooth
- To enable the Bluetooth service, which will make it start up automatically each time that the Raspberry Pi boots up, execute this command:
$ sudo systemctl enable bluetooth
- To disable Bluetooth, which will inhibit it from starting up upon future system boots, execute:
$ sudo systemctl disable bluetooth
- You can also enable or disable the Bluetooth via desktop GUI. Just right click on the Bluetooth icon in your task bar, and choose to turn it on or off.
Enabling and disabling Bluetooth from the desktop’s task bar
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to enable or disable Bluetooth on a Raspberry Pi 4. Bluetooth runs as a service managed by systemd, so a simple
systemctl command can be used to control its behavior. Alternatively, the Bluetooth can be turned on or off from the desktop GUI. For help with connecting a device to your Raspberry Pi via Bluetooth, see our other tutorial here: How to check Bluetooth status on Raspberry Pi.
